


Songbird

by MorteMistrata



Series: Witchersexual Jaskier is Valid [2]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Dumbass in love, Gen, Jaskier is attracted to danger, Jaskier is not a woobified baby boy, M/M, Multi, Other, There's a shit ton of tropes in here but I'm not saying which ones, Uhhhh midburn I guess, an there mayyyybe a surprise ship in here, and geralt is danger personified, and is still strong, because I have no patience for slow and I'm not going to smut right away, but also whipped for geralt, but not the main focus, but there is going to be violence, he is a man in touch with his feminine side, i sincerely hate tagging because I feel that it ruins the plot a bit, of the physical and emotional sort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:14:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 47,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22850800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorteMistrata/pseuds/MorteMistrata
Summary: Jaskier realizes that traveling with a Witcher brings forth much more trouble than he initially expected. Such as: angry townsfolk, mobs and general unexpected violence.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: Witchersexual Jaskier is Valid [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1820257
Comments: 278
Kudos: 445





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for stopping by, and don't forget to read and review. I'm happy to take suggestions or requests either in the comments or over on my tumblr @ morte-mistrata.

The sun sets over the trees, casting golden light on Geralt’s white hair, and the dark black gleam of his leather armor. This time of day is Jaskier’s favorite, (except for when it’s not, like after the rainy season finally breaks into sunshine, or he wakes the morning of a winter’s first snow) but he hardly notices the way that the color drenches the picturesque woodland around them. How could he, when the White Wolf is glaring at the sunset like a dog without his dinner, determinedly ignoring Jaskier’s humming, and looking so impossibly picturesque while he does it?

The image makes Jaskier think of the elves once more, and as if his hand were a lodestone, and the lute a magnet, his fingers find their way to his new instrument. He’d heard of the Butcher of Blaviken. Everyone had, and more than a few of his fellow bards had made songs of their own from it. No one had been propelled into fame because of it. Tragic songs hardly ever made it big. Everyone who was anyone had heard of the tale, either by spoken word, or song. It had made Geralt seem like some sort of boogieman, though it was obvious to Jaskier now that he was nothing of the sort.

“Stop that.”

Jaskier realizes that he’s been brushing his fingers against the strings, playing half-chords of his newest song mindlessly. He drops his hand to his side, and picks up his pace to walk beside Geralt, instead of near Roach’s flank.

“What, you don’t like it?”

Geralt grunts. 

Jaskier is not satisfied. 

He brings his fingers to the neck of his lute, and strums the opening of “Toss a coin”. Geralt’s face is as picturesque and still as a statue’s, impossible to read. He feels a need to defend his song. “It’ll be sung in every bar you glower yourself into, and you’ll thank me for the women throwing themselves at your feet. My song is-” The music stops abruptly as Geralt grunts again, but this time Jaskier can tell that the slight twitching of his mouth, and the softening of his glare is a sign of amusement. 

He thinks Jaskier being flustered is funny. 

“I shouldn’t have asked,” Jaskier sniffs. “If your clothes are anything to go by, you’ve got no taste to begin with.”

The sun is finally below the treeline, and the golden hour has passed. The light is dimming, and though Jaskier can still see the road ahead, he knows that darkness will fall soon enough. He’s not sure how far they are from the town; it’d felt like it took the whole afternoon to get to Filanvandrel, but they’d also spent a good portion of the day knocked out and tied up. His inner clock is all sort of messed up, but his stomach isn’t. He’s hungry, and by the time they get back, prime playing hour will likely have passed, and along with it, his chances for dinner. The bread from earlier had fallen from his pants during the altercation, either during the scuffle, or when they’d been dragged up to his lair. He’s more than a little rueful about it’s loss. 

Jaskier doesn’t want to say anything about how hungry he is. He’s pretty sure that Geralt isn’t overly attached to his presence. He’d saved Jaskier’s life earlier (nevermind that Jaskier got himself into trouble in the first place), but he’s not been what anyone would consider friendly since they’d met. Despite it, Geralt is kind. and Jaskier is a fool. Even when Jaskier’d thought that he really was the butcher of legend, he’d wanted to speak with him, to be near him. He’s not going to throw that away over a little hunger, or aching feet. 

The night birds are coming out now. Jaskier can hear the distant song of a mockingbird, and from somewhere behind them, a few nightingales calling to each other.

“You’re on the road a lot,” Jaskier says, his pace slowing again as he strains to hear their songs over the sounds of their traveling. Roach’s hooves crunching against the dirt underfoot, and Geralt’s calm, steady breathing adds to the symphony of the evening. “Do you travel much in the dark?”

“Hmm.”

Jaskier decides to take that as a yes. He turns his gaze away from his companion, and focuses on the road ahead. His head is starting to hurt, and along with his stomach hurting, it’s beginning to make him irritable. “What do you like most about it? The birds sound different. The stars inspire poets and plebeians alike, like you," Jaskier teases, turning on his heel in a wobbling circle. "I like the moon tonight. It’s the kind of thing that shines over battlefields, glinting over armor and puddles of blood and...” The words trail out. Though Jaskier has more, he can’t get them to connect. He thinks of the Ballad of Blaviken again. 

_Her beauty was squandered under sharpened sword_

_And as he left, he uttered naught a word_

_The streets were stained red, bloody like a rose._

_And now not to trust a Butcher, everyone knows._

Does he know about those songs? Does he get tired of how people talk about him, and fear and despise him, despite how they cry for his help? He’d promised him earlier today that he would write a song to change that, but it certainly seems a hard task when confronted with the weight of their fears. 

“The stars are making my head hurt.” Jaskier says, as bile rises in his throat. He lurches over, vomit splattering into the grass. The sound of Roach’s hooves slows to a stop, though Jaskier hardly notices it against the background of his own sickness. 

A hand rests on his shoulder, not holding him up, but with the rigidity to do so if necessary. Jaskier’s legs shake as another wave of nausea rushes over him, spilling his meager lunch thankfully, away from his shoes. 

“He hit your head?”

This is the first time since they were captured that Geralt has strung more than three words together. Unfortunately, it’s also the first time that Jaskier’s been unable to respond beyond a sickly groan. 

“Hmm,” Geralt says, waiting for the last of Jaskier’s retching to abate before wrenching him upright, though not unkindly. “Concussion.”

Jaskier straightens up, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “What?”

“Your brain bounces around, and makes you sick.” He leads Jaskier over to Roach, somehow giving Jaskier the illusion that he’s mostly walking on his own, despite the knowledge that he’s so dizzy he can barely see straight. He shoves him in the general direction of the saddle until Jaskier takes the hint and climbs on. “We can either make camp, and see if you sleep it off, or see after a healer.”

Jaskier doesn’t have healer money. He might have, if they’d gotten back to town and he’d played his song, and it wasn’t a failure, but as it is, all he has to his name is the clothes he’s wearing, and his lute. Not enough for a healer. Not even the sort with a kind streak. 

“No healer.” Jaskier manages, sounding very much like a frog instead of a bard. 

Geralt snorts, but doesn’t comment on it. He boards Roach with the kind of ease that comes with spending a fuck ton of time on a horse, sliding snugly behind Jaskier. He pulls at Roach’s reins, and he picks up speed. The speed makes his head hurt worse, but at least, Jaskier thinks as he leans back against Geralt, as sturdy as a stone wall, he’ll have a story to tell, and a song to sing. 

Sometime after that Jaskier falls asleep, only waking when Roach finally comes to a stop, and Geralt pauses above him, hesitation and awkwardness so thick between them that he can taste it in the air. 

“I can get down.” Jaskier mumbles, bleary from sleep. His head still hurts, but it’s the dull sort of ache that accompanies a hangover, rather than the sharp overbearing one from earlier. His arms feel oddly heavy and slow, but he’s managed to do more with less. Jaskier lands on his feet, though nearly falls over, and makes his way over to the nearest tree trunk while Geralt sets to making camp. 

Maybe it’s the almost dying thing. Maybe it’s because Geralt is actually a warm-hearted, if somewhat socially stunted person (it explains much more than the ‘big, bad monster’ stereotype does). Whatever it is, sitting there, and watching Geralt start a fire using a pile of twigs and a flip of his fingers, makes it feel like he’s done this a million times before. Like he’s known Geralt in some lifetime before this, and he belongs here.

It’s probably the concussion. Or maybe it’s the dreaminess that all good bards possess. Whatever it is, Jaskier decides, his head hurts too much to question it. 

He closes his eyes as the fire begins to crackle, and lets himself fall back asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyo. That last scene in this chap was inspired by https://morte-mistrata.tumblr.com/post/190931749090/calyssmarviss-geralt-letting-jaskier-see-him. Go check it out.

They arrive at the nearest village late the next morning. A different one, Jaskier realizes belatedly, than the one they had first met in. It makes sense, because even at this new one, they ask about the demon from the town over, as it was close enough to still make them wary. It makes Geralt uncomfortable, Jaskier reckons, given how things actually went down.

“Well,” The barkeep, a buxom woman in her mid-thirties asks as she pours a cup of ale for them both. “Did’ja killit?”

Geralt gives what Jaskier is beginning to consider as a characteristic response: a grunt, leaving the woman unsatisfied. Jaskier nudges at his arm with his elbow, sending a glare his way. Leaving the woman's curiosity might make her change their ‘on the house’ ale to one they’ll have to pay for. And to Jaskier’s knowledge, neither of them currently have a dime to their names.

“He did,” Jaskier speaks up. Geralt gives him a look that one who hadn’t spent the better portion of a day tied up with him might interpret as scary. Jaskier ignores it and continues on. “And he could tell you. But as you can see, the Witcher doesn’t have much of a way with words. I, however, am a bard. I went to Oxenfurt. I’ve got a song more suited than anything he could say.”

The barkeep, Jaskier realizes as a smile begins to creep across her face, is quite a beauty. Just as fine wine grows better with age, so do the great beauties of the world.

“You sing?” She questions, tilting her head. Her hair falls across her face, black strands a lovely contrast to Geralt’s snow-white locks. 

“I can.”

The barkeep smiles and gestures to the bar, already half full despite the early hour. 

Jaskier’s head started to hurt when the sun inched it’s way over the treeline, shining bright and annoying into his eyes. It’s only a lingering pain now, nothing so bad as to prevent him from playing, though if he gets another dizzy spell, his song might not be as sweet as he'd hoped.

Still, he drops his hand to his lute, and begins to play. 

_“When a humble bard_

_Graced a ride along_

_With Geralt of Rivia_

_Along came this song,”_

A few of the patrons have looked up from their drinks. Geralt, despite being uneasy about it all, takes a seat at the bar, and begins to sip from his own. The song sounds even more beautiful than when he’d first penned it, more sure, and falls easily off of his tongue. He tries not to let his gaze falter from his audience, but as he walks around, rousing the crowd, and flirting with the barkeep, he can’t keep his eyes from flickering over to Geralt, noting his reception to Jaskier’s first real performance. 

His seems more interested in his drink than anything else, but as the chorus brings his audience to their feet, laughing and singing along, he swears that his eyes soften, and something close enough to a smile pulls at his lips. Bolstered by his companion’s response, he finishes the song exuberantly, and with a smile. 

“Oy,” one of the drunkards says, drawing a coin from his pocket. The coin falls short just in front of his feet. He elbows the guy next to him, and gestures at the bard. With a sigh, the man tosses another. “Sing it again.”

Jaskier leans down to scoop up his pay, and then setting a coin on the counter for Geralt, begins again. By the time he’s done with his set, he's gotten five or so thrown at his feet, enough to pay for a room and a meal. More than enough to start a week long stay before making his way to the next town. 

Instead he collects his lute, and taking a seat beside Geralt, asks, “Where next?”

Geralt’s eyes widen slightly, so slightly that Jaskier might not have recognized it as surprise unless he was focusing as hard as he was. “You have an audience for your song. You’ll heal better here than on the road.”

Not a no, Jaskier notes. “I’ll have an audience no matter where I go. It’s a splendid song.”

“Your head.”

“I can’t afford a healer, Geralt. You’re the closest thing to it.”

Geralt doesn’t argue further. He finishes his drink, and buys another. As the barkeep fills his cup, he asks, “Are there any monsters here?”

The barkeep’s smile falls into a flat line. She pauses in drying her cups, and sighs heavily. “Aye, though I doubt we have enough money to pay you for it.”

“Is there a mayor or alderman here?”

“Aye,” She says again. She points a slender finger towards the eastward window, at the large house looming through the trees. “He lives there, but he’s a drunkard. Won’t have the streets paved, and won’t post a bounty. You might find coin there.”

“Then I’ll do it. What’s the monster?”

“A wolf, big one. Claws any who are on the edges of town after dark. We’ve lost ten men since it came.”

“A werewolf?” Jaskier asks. It’s the only wolf-monster-thing that he can think of.

“An Amarok,” Geralt corrects, finishing his ale off. He sets the mug back on the counter, and stands, heading towards the door without looking to see if Jaskier is following. 

Jaskier can’t finish his drink nearly as quickly, but he takes another swig to soothe his throat, and pours the rest in his flask. He leaves another coin on the counter for the woman, and smiles as he leaves. Maybe there will be time to come back, he thinks, but there’s no guarantee. He intends to stay with Geralt for as long as he can, and longer still if he’s able. If that means leaving a flower like her untouched, well, there are always more women. 

Geralt is still at the stables when Jaskier makes his way there. He can hear him, Jaskier knows enough of Witchers to understand that much, but he doesn’t move. Jaskier pauses at the door, watching him brush Roach with a gentleness he seems loathe to show otherwise. He offers a sugarcube, and pets Roach as she licks it eagerly from his palm. 

“Do you think the drunkard mayor will give you coin for this monster? He seems like an arse.”

“He’ll pay.”

“Will you still kill it if he won’t?”

“Hmm.” Geralt grunts as he leads Roach out of the stables.

“Well, either way, you got free ale. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to leave it be.” He studies Geralt’s expression, but finds it unreadable. 

Geralt remains silent as they walk onto the main road. Jaskier understands that he talks a lot, but normally it’s not so bad. It’s just that Geralt’s silence; he’s like an enigma, and there’s nothing that he can do besides try to tease it out of him by way of words. 

“In my experience, mayors are either the jolly fat kind, willing to pay well for entertainment and the illusion of being richer than he is, or old ornery bastards. Sounds like a bastard though.” Jaskier muses. Geralt could ride faster, he notes. He isn’t. He’s keeping pace with Jaskier, though it might just be because of the nature of the monster. From what he gathers, most come out at night. 

Of course, the songs he’s heard, and the nursery rhymes his parents sung to him are not always true. The Ballad of Blaviken certainly wasn’t. Though he is not certain where all of the discrepancies lie, he knows that characterizing Geralt as a monster is a mistake. 

“Have you met elves before?”

“Hmm.”

“I can’t tell if that’s a yes or no.”

Geralt is quiet for a moment, long enough for Jaskier to wonder if he’ll even answer. Finally, he says, “Yes.”

“Are they all so… angry?”

“Wouldn’t you be if your race had been massacred and your land stolen from you?”

Jaskier supposes that’s true. He isn’t sure if this is a sensitive point for him or not, like the Blaviken thing was. 

“I’m not the violent sort. I’d probably recoup my losses and chatter angrily about it where I couldn't be heard.” He says honestly. “This monster. The wolf thing.”

“Amarok.” 

“Right. Have you fought one before?”

“Hmm.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Jaskier mutters. “You are a very difficult person to converse with. Can’t I get details without needling you for them?”

“No.” 

And so the journey to the mayor’s house goes that way, with Jaskier pushing for Geralt to respond, and Geralt acting like a toddler who’d missed his nap. By the time they arrive, with Geralt keeping pace with Jaskier, it’s nearly mid afternoon. His legs hurt from the walking, though he doesn’t mention it, and he regrets not buying any food while they were in town.

The building is a square, rigid thing, with thick pillars near the front door. A sign with runes, likely a blessing, hangs over it, along with a bundle of herbs. As Geralt approaches, a strong wind blows, knocking it open. Despite the windows dotting the outer walls, it’s dim. A rank scent of sweat and unwashed bodies wafts from inside. Jaskier wrinkles his nose at it as Geralt pushes in, seemingly unaffected. 

“You’d expect nicer from a mayor,” Jaskier prattles. He doesn’t like the way the air smells of sickness and death. He hasn’t much experience with either, but that which he has had is enough to make him nervous. “With all the taxes that common folk pay.”

“More often than not, it goes to waste.”

Lining the entry hall are portraits of fat, stout men besides smiling women. Some are prettier than others, but all seem better than the station to which they’d married. Towards the end of the hall, two double doors lie open to a large room that Jaskier assumes is a kitchen or dining room of some sort. 

The smell is thicker now, strong enough for Jaskier to believe that that’s where it comes from. 

“Is that…”

His foot catches onto a pan on the floor, and it’s skids across the ground until it stops with a quiet thud. Geralt turns suddenly, mouth pressed into a thin line, and walks towards the pantry. Or no, Jaskier realizes as he follows behind. A wine cellar. Sitting in the midst of it is a fat, stout man, just like the others in the portraits in the hall. Empty bottles are scattered around his body, and dark wine stains dot the floor.

“Dead.” Geralt proclaims, kneeling beside him. “Drank too much. Likely a week or more ago.”

And then, as if touching something with such a scent means nothing to him at all, he starts to drag it out. Jaskier jumps back, glass crunching beneath his feet. “What’re you doing?”

“Burying him. Better to spend the time to dig a grave than leave this place to be haunted.”

Jaskier grimances, but realizes that the task of convincing the man to pay up won’t be necessary anymore. “I’ll look for a shovel.”

He spends a few minutes working his way through the manor to the backyard, and it’s only then that he breathes deeply again. He’s still unsettled; despite how death is often portrayed in song and written word, it’s anything but romantic. But he can breathe easier now that the late afternoon sun is shining down on him. The shovel is in the abandoned gardeners hut in the backyard, and along with it, he finds a length of cheesecloth to be used as a funeral shroud. He passes by a few fruit trees on his way back to the manor, and figuring that he can’t exactly rob a dead man’s garden, picks a handful or two for him and Geralt to share as a late dinner. 

Geralt is standing near the family plot near the side of the house, staring gloomily at the derelict manor. He seems surprised that Jaskier came back, and even more so at his offerings. 

“I found the shovel and something to bury him in. And fruit. I’m famished, so you probably are too. I would’ve gone through his provisions, but I didn’t want to in case of ghosts or something.”

“After he’s in the ground,” Geralt says, wrapping the body with the ease of one who has done it many times before. “I’ll find my pay. You can get food and drink. He won’t rise over something as petty, and the townsfolk will be here soon enough to take more.”

“If looting doesn’t make them come back, what does?”

“Horrible deaths, unfinished business,” Geralt lists. “And not being buried. Anything that keeps them from final rest.”

Jaskier frowns, but doesn’t comment on it. He doesn’t want to go back into the manor, but he should make use of himself if he wants Geralt to not send him away. 

While Geralt digs, Jaskier comes back inside, opening the grimy windows as he creeps deeper inside. In the kitchen, he finds two bottles of fancy wine, more expensive than anything he could ever afford, several bags of dried meat, and a loaf of stale bread. He fashions a bag from an empty sack of flower, and slings it over his shoulder as he tries to find the master bedroom. 

It’s upstairs, he assumes, and so he retraces his steps until he finds the main hall, and off to the left of it, a stairway. If he can find the coin, then they can leave as soon as Geralt is done, and Jaskier won’t have to spend a moment more here. 

With that knowledge in mind, he forces himself upstairs. 

There are many, many doors, all dusty, all closed. He ignores them, and remembering the architecture class he had mostly slept through, heads towards the last one. His hunch is right. When he opens it, a great, horrible smell rushes out at him. His stomach turns, and he bends over, struggling not to vomit. 

Jaskier sets his sack down, and holds his sleeve over his mouth and nose. The scent of his own perfume lessens the stench as he steps inside. The curtains are made of a thick fabric, and are closed, letting only a single beam of light shine in. Jaskier stumbles towards the window, and shoves the curtains aside, and the window open. Fresh air pushes in. He leans out, taking long, deep breaths of thankfully scentless air, and then turns to survey the room. 

A corpse hangs from the canopy, wearing a dress of bright red fabric. Unmistakably, the mistress of the house. 

This time, Jaskier does vomit.

When his stomach can find nothing else to release, he straightens up, and creeping along the edge of the room, eyes never leaving the hanged woman, he finds the bedside table. 

He glances away for only a moment, rummaging frantically through the drawers until he finds a sack of coin. 

Carefully, quietly, he creeps back towards the door as if to keep a babe from waking. Jaskier closes it, snatches up his sack, and dashes down the stairs so fast, it’s a wonder he didn’t stumble and fall. 

He’s so frantic to get outside that he doesn’t pay attention to which door he’s run through, until he realizes that he’s standing at the front, with Roach tied demurely nearby. 

Shakily, he pats her snout, and heads towards the back.

“Geralt,” He calls as he approaches. The Witcher looks up, the grave already half finished. “There’s another dead upstairs. A woman. Probably his wife.” Jaskier sets the coin and food down near Geralt’s feet. Geralt glances from them, to Jaskier’s wide eyed gaze, then back to the manor. 

“Fuck.” He mutters, as he turns back to the house to retrieve the second body. 

##

By the time that Geralt has both buried, and their funeral rites complete, it’s long past dinner. As they leave the manor, the sun is beginning to set, though the sky is much darker than it was the previous night due to the clouds accumulating above them. Combined with the trees, tall and dark like they’d been there forever, the trek back to the village will be mostly in the dark. 

According to the barkeep, the Amarok will come out soon.

“Stay with the mayor,” Geralt advises. “The way back to the village will be safe in the morning.”

“It’ll take hours to walk there,” Jaskier complains, and does not say, ‘will you wait for me?’ or ‘I don’t want to part ways yet’. “With a concussion, by myself, is that a good idea?”

Jaskier doesn’t think so, but given he's really only bringing this up as an excuse not to part, he can’t be certain. He holds his breath as Roach’s footsteps slow, but do not stop. 

“No.” Geralt sighs.

“It’ll be fine. Where else would I be safer than by your side? You’ve got legends and songs written about you.” Geralt’s lips curls slightly as they reach the end of the mayor’s drive. The moon begins to rise, and the last vestiges of light disappear over the horizon. Night has fallen, and though it is young, Jaskier has no doubt that it does not imply safety. “Besides, I’d like to get another story out of you, and you’re not exactly forthcoming with the details.”

“Hmm.”

“Exactly.” 

Geralt glances down at him, but his face doesn’t read as being humored, or teasing. His expression reminds Jaskier of the fox that used to live in the woods behind his university. It would allow students to see him, and even would accept food thrown on the ground nearby it, but it’s eyes never left the people around, distrusting of the kindness shown to it. 

Jaskier falls quiet. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Jaskier is friendly. He makes friends (and lovers and enemies quickly). Geralt doesn’t. He probably doesn’t know what to do with Jaskier’s niceness. 

“How will you know when it’s here?”

“It’ll smell.”

“You can smell it?”

“Hmm.”

Jaskier pauses. “Can you smell me?”

“Hmm.”

“Well if you’ve got a strong nose, can’t you smell yourself? The onion scent…” Jaskier trails off, his voice light and teasing. 

Geralt still doesn’t seem amused, but the corner of his mouth might have twitched upwards. 

“Oh, well, I’m sure you know.” Jaskier plays with the neck of his lute again, itching to trail his fingers across the strings. He doesn’t have a new song in mind, but he itches to lay a tune to fill the silence. There’s the idle noises of Roach’s hooves, and Jaskier’s breathing, and the wind in the trees, and filling it all, are his own thoughts, insecure, and wanting. 

Somewhere in the distance, a beat howls, too high pitched and long to be anything natural. 

“Is.. is that it? The Amarok?”

“Fuck.” Geralt’s mouth screws up into a grimace. He dismounts Roach, and rummages through his bags. “It’s caught onto our scent. I’ll make my stand here. Go climb a tree, get out of it’s reach.”

It hits Jaskier suddenly, that this is not all fun and games, that there might be worse things out there than peeved elves out to break his lute. A rush of adrenaline, sweet and pulsating, rushes through his veins. 

“It can’t climb?”

Geralt is busy pulling vials from his saddlebags, but he spares a moment to fixate Jaskier with a look that reads very clearly as ‘you imbecile, have you ever seen a wolf climb a tree?’. 

“Right, right,” Jaskier mutters, backing up. The point in the road that they’ve paused in is wide, and brighter than the woods, though not by much. Jaskier approaches a tree close to the road with branches thick enough to hold him, and low enough to climb, and pulls himself up to a height he assumes is high enough to avoid the beasts claws. 

Geralt is oiling his sword with something that glimmers in the dim light, like phosphorus. He glances up at Jaskier, and then back to his sword. “Higher.”

Jaskier does not like climbing with a lute. He does not like it. But he stands, and trying not to look down too much, pulls himself up another few branches. Geralt swats at Roach’s flank, and she runs off, disappearing into the woods like she were a part of the shadows. 

Jaskier wonders when the wolf thing will show up. There are quite a lot of good metaphors he could write with that; the white wolf, and the black. Oh, but that’s more than a little overdone, isn’t it? Black and white symbolism is so overdone, especially when the world is honestly much more grey. Maybe he could leave the colors out of it, and try using night and day. Or he-

It jumps from the trees behind him, knocking into the trunk of Jaskier’s tree with such force that it bows forward, nearly knocking him loose. His heart thunders in his ears as it slides to a stop, and turns, clawing at the trunk. Geralt was right. If he had remained where he was, he’d be disemboweled by now. 

Silently, Geralt charges behind it, stabbing towards its heart. It moves at the last second, leaning right, and Geralt’s sword clips into its leg instead. It growls, haunches rising, and charges at him. It’s claws are long, and unnaturally white. Even in the dark, Jaskier can see the glint of its teeth. It could be mistaken for a wolf, he decides, if one were scared and running from it, and unable to get a good look. But with his vantage point, he can see it for what it is. It’s limbs are much too long to be normal, making it nearly the same height as Geralt. 

Geralt rolls neatly out of the way of it’s attack, and when he charges again, the wolf favors it’s hurt paw, and tries to bite at Geralt’s sword wielding hand. And Geralt, instead of leaning back, lunges forward and low, stabbing at an odd angle into it’s chest. The creature howls, and snarls and swipes at Geralt, and though he draws blood, he does not move until it falls still and silent at the end of his blade. 

Jaskier waits an excruciating ten seconds (he counts), and slides down to the ground. 

“That was amazing! I’d thought it’d be harder for you, with how much a deal the townsfolk made of it. Have you killed many of those before? Did you-”

Geralt moves so quickly Jaskier only registers it as a blur and blunt pain as he presses him against the trunk of the tree. Uneven bark from where the wolf clawed presses against his back, and the full weight of Geralt presses against his front. He’s not sure what Geralt is doing, and as he looks up to study his expression, he notices that his eyes are black, blacker than the night, and his skin deathly pale. Dark blue veins protrude from his eyes and trail down his cheeks. 

He looks like the monster that everyone makes him out to be. 

Geralt sneers, breath hot against Jaskier’s face. “So, still wanna come with?”

 _Certainly,_ Jaskier thinks. _I’d like to come with and on and in your arms._ The erection straining against the seam of his breeches agrees wholeheartedly.

“Y-yes?”

Geralt pulls back, mouth returning to it’s usual flat line. “Hmm. See you- Wait.”

“I still want to come with you. If you’ll have me.” And even if you won’t.

Geralt looks like someone who just claimed the law of surprise and found a child in his care. He doesn’t say anything for a moment, though Jaskier imagines a ‘hmm,’ or ‘fuck’ is sure to follow. 

He steps away, returning to the corpse. He pulls his sword free, and saws off it’s head. With a whistle, he calls Roach back, and begins to unpack his things for the night. A flask of water. A rag to clean his sword. 

Jaskier still hasn’t moved from the tree. Carefully, he creeps forward, unsure of what he’s supposed to do now that he’s established that he’s not scared or about to run off screaming. 

“Go get tinder.” Geralt says. 

And like the whole thing never happened, Jaskier does. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *squints* I can see 45 suscribers, but only three comments? C'mon guys! The best way to get more fic is to comment!
> 
> Thanks for reading, and don't forget to review!

In the morning after they pack up camp, Geralt saws chunks of flesh off of the amarok, and stores them bloody and raw, wrapped in leaves. Jaskier wrinkles his nose at the sight of it- congealed browning blood, and matted grey fur only look more horrendous in the morning light- and politely averts his eyes as he picks at his own breakfast. 

“So, where to next?” Jaskier doesn’t remember what towns are near them, or what direction they’re currently traveling in. His concussion had thrown him off, and he’s been trying to figure it out without asking, though he hasn’t gotten any less lost for it. “We’re headed south, right?”

“Southeast.” Geralt corrects, tucking his spoils into Roach’s saddlebags. He keeps a slab of meat in hand, and as he pulls himself into the saddle, tears long, wet strips out of it, seemingly unconcerned withit’s uncooked state or the mess it makes on his hands. “Once we hit the coast, we’ll head back north.”

“What’s at the coast?” 

“Drowners.” 

“Is this all you do, all the time? Travel and kill things?”

“What else would I do?”

“Visit a nice wench. Get ploughed. Go to the beach.” Jaskier trails off, unable to think of other things that might interest him. “There are other things in life than just killing monsters.”

Geralt grunts noncommittally, but Jaskier knows that like any man, he likes getting ploughed. He just won’t admit to it. 

"I suppose it's because Witchers don't have fun, hmm?" He shifts his sack of food and wine over the shoulder opposite of his lute. He frowns at the weight. "What's the point of being alive if not to live?" Geralt surveys Jaskier, and plucks the sack from his shoulder, attaching it to Roach's saddle with the other bags. "Thanks."

"Witcher's exist because monsters exist. There aren't many of us left, but there are plenty of  _ them _ ."

Jaskier knows this. While everyone knows of the conjunction of the spheres, though not always by that name, he knows more than the average peasant. He knows about the monsters that lurk in dark, violent places, and about how woefully unprepared the average person is to deal with them. There was a massacre, some time ago, because fear makes people stupid, and where once it might have been possible for Geralt to retire, he supposes it isn’t now. 

Still, a vacation every once in a while shouldn’t hurt. 

“That’s true,” Jaskier agrees. “And that’s exactly why people should appreciate you more. So, onward?”

Geralt is silent, but prods Roach onwards nonetheless. 

It takes the better part of two weeks for the dizziness to wear off, and in that time, they settle into a routine. They reach a town, and while Geralt investigates the local monsters, Jaskier plays a few songs in the tavern or inn. He pays for their dinner, and trails along behind Geralt, watching from a safe distance while he dispatches the wraith, or plague maiden or drowner. Sometimes the bar will give them room and board for free. Sometimes Geralt pays for it, and sometimes Jaskier does, while Geralt buys supplies for the next branch of the journey. More often than not, they share a single room to save money, which no matter how much it seems to flow, is always in short supply. 

For the most part, Jaskier does a very good job of not thinking about that night in the forest;Of how he’d felt pressed against the trunk of a tree, with Geralt leaning over him, or how his heart had picked up it’s pace, heat blooming from his crotch all the way to his cheeks. And he especially  _ does not _ think about what exactly that all means, and most especially, does not do so at night when he’s supposed to be sleeping. 

###

The part of the village closest to the water is empty. A few birds cry out in the distance, too high for either arrow or monster to catch. The ocean is distractingly still, and with the sun above shining bright and warm across it, it looks like a perfect day for a swim. 

Jaskier is glad that Geralt told him before they’d even breached the village gates not to go in, otherwise he might have made a perfect victim. 

One of the homes closest to it has been left with both doors and windows open, allowing humidity and rain, and leaves to push their way in, eating at what was once a nice hovel. Geralt shoulders the door wider, which complies with a groaning creak, and sets his things on the table. Roach is off at the stables at the inn, with a hefty threat to anyone who might think of taking her keeping her safe. It’d be too dangerous to keep a horse this close to the threat, and even if it weren’t, there’s no room for her. All of the houses here are built on stilts over the water. For better or worse, the ocean is an integral part of these people’s lives, and it’s reflected in every aspect of it.

Back at the inn at the crossroads, most of the men wore the thick, waterproof boots most fishermen preferred, or were barefoot, skin crusted with salt. The woman wore skirts shorter than what would be considered proper further inland, with sleeves short, and skin tanned. The color blue was everywhere, and Jaskier loved it. How nice, to have color everywhere, bright and vibrant. The homeliness of it all, he sighed, was something to be sung about. 

Alas, the only inn is much too far to backtrack to after Geralt’s done here. Any new songs will have to be sung going forward to the next one. 

Jaskier steps inside after Geralt, squinting as his eyes adjust to the dimness. He notes that there are protective herbs scattered on the floor, the kind often tied and bundled in the threshold for protection. Jaskier recognizes bay leaves amongst them, but shriveled and rotted as they are, it’s difficult to tell the others. As Geralt sits down, pulling out a rag and oil for his sword, Jaskier walks around, curious at his new surroundings. The place is one room, small for a family, though not uncommon for fishermen. In coastal cities, those right on the water often don’t mind the close proximity, not with the freedom of the blue only a few steps away. 

The scent of necrophage oil mixes with salt. Jaskier closes the window and sees a toy boat and child’s net hanging out to dry on the sill. He lets his fingers trail over them, and remembers his own childhood before pushing the memory far away. 

Set against the far wall is a shrine to the local water gods, with a bowl of water and a bit of food set in front of it. Jaskier sets his lute on the table next to Geralt’s things, and walks over to it. He presses a finger against the chunk of bread. It’s hard. Stale. This place has been empty for a while, and it doesn’t take a Witcher’s senses to know that. The other buildings look more orderly. Evacuated, instead of left haphazardly. Their doors are locked and closed against looters, though it appears no one has touched this place, despite it’s open invitation. 

“See if there’s any food left.” Geralt says, leaning back in his chair. It creaks under his weight, just like everything in the house would probably creak if he pressed his weight against it. 

“I thought you said we weren’t going to be here long.”

“We aren’t, but there’s no use in letting food go to waste. Local custom will leave this place untouched for another month before people come back to loot.”

Jaskier realizes it suddenly. “This is where the boy lived.” 

“Yes,” Geralt tilts his head, and returns the oils to his bag. The scent still lingers in the air, a sobering reminder of why, exactly, they’re here. “But the reason it will remain uninhabited is because the mother drowned herself outside, and the father garrotted himself on the porch.”

“‘One death is a shame, two is a tragedy but three is a bad omen’.” At Geralt’s quizzical look, he adds, “A line from an old folk poem. There’s more to it, but it’s all rather sad.”

Geralt stands, the chair catching on the uneven wood grain as he pushes it back. “What’s a dead family mean?”

“A statistic.”

The air feels heavy and thick with his proclamation. 

A whole family, dead. It’s not an unusual occurrence. Of course it’s not. The world they live in is dangerous. But for the longest, Jaskier has been able to ignore it. Sticking to inns and singing songs, have allowed him to ignore the monsters lurking in the woods around them. Keeping on the move means that he doesn’t have to see illness take over a village, killing everyone and leaving a variety of wraiths behind to kill anyone unfortunate enough to stumble upon it after. Staying with Geralt, he realizes, will mean seeing a lot more like it. 

Geralt clears his throat, and the somber mood is replaced with his usual practicality, like oil on rough waters. He points at the seaward window, where the child’s toys still lay. 

“You can watch through there. Stay here. I’ll be done soon.” Geralt doesn’t bother to sheathe his sword as he steps back outside. He fixes Jaskier with a look that probably would be intimidating to someone who doesn’t know that Geralt snores like a ratchedy old dog when he’s particularly tired. “Stay.”

Jaskier is decidedly uncomfortable with staying in a place so saturated with death, but he nods anyway. There’s no point in being overly dramatic when he knows Geralt won’t take more than a few minutes to be done with it. 

“Fine. I’ll stay. Get on with it then. I want to go swimming sometime today.”

Geralt adjusts his grip on his sword, and slips outside, toward the shore. Jaskier spends a few perfunctory minutes rummaging through the cabinets, finding little more than dried fish and more stale bread, and then heads back to the window. The sun makes the water gleam, and a soft breeze brushes across the water, caressing Jaskier’s hair, and nudging at the toys. The net flutters, the end picking up in the wind, and then finally, inches its way towards open air. 

He snaps up the net just before it takes flight, and then with only slight hesitation, grabs the boat too.  _ I shouldn’t have touched that _ , Jaskier thinks suddenly. He glances around, looking for a place to set them, and his eyes settle on the altar. Carefully, with reverence, he sets them there. He takes a piece of the dried fish, and replaces the stale bread. There’s no great change. No spirit visibly appeared to thank him. No voice whispering it’s thanks. But he feels better. Like the air of the cabin no longer feels so thick with tragedy.

As always, they’d stopped at the inn as soon as they arrived. The farther they got from the big central cities, the more important they became. Not just because it was where they could find food, drink, a place to sleep, and often most importantly, a bath, but because that was the social hub of the town, and the most likely place for both of them to find their coin. While Jaskier had flirted with the barkeep, hoping to convince him to give him a free mug of ale, Geralt had found the Elderman and haggled with him until he scored seventy gold for ridding the area of it’s drowners, a task long overdue. They won’t have to pay for a bed for the night; no one will begrudge them staying in this empty house, and there’s food, plenty of it just outside on the banks and in the water. 

No need to stay outside like they had intermittently over the past few weeks, traveling between towns growing farther and farther apart. One thought calls to another, and he  _ remembers _ :

_ The sun set long ago, and though Jaskier had kept walking without complaint (or little enough, anyway), Geralt had finally called for them to stop and make camp. Jaskier’s feet ached, though his fingers still called to brush against the strings of his lute. Ever since he’d met Geralt, music seemed to flow as easily as water downstream, inspired and happy and new. The few places where there were audiences to hear it were happy with his songs, happy enough to make his pockets more full than they had been for a long time, and inspired him to keep writing more. Even when Geralt got grumpy about his inaccuracies.  _ Especially _ so then.  _

_ And while Jaskier’s fingers itch to strum the strings of Filavandre’s lute, his feet and weary head have him sinking into the rain dampened earth, his back pressed against the trunk of a smooth barked tree as he watches Geralt set out his bedroll, and rummage through his supplies for dinner. He tosses Jaskier his pack, which he only barely manages to catch.  _

_ “No fire tonight,” Geralt warns as he digs into the last of his Amarok flesh.  _

_ Despite cutting up most of it, a creature at least three hundred pounds, he’s finished it in under a week. He eats a lot, Jaskier realizes. While riding, after a fight, at meal times. Jaskier’s even watched him do so while fighting. Despite the amount he consumes, he never seems to much enjoy it. It’s as if he eats because he has to, a pleasureless activity.  _

_ “Why not? It’s not as if you require flint, and you’ve run out.” _

_ “Everything’s too wet. It’ll smoke too much. Attract attention.” _

_ And gods be damned if anyone gives Geralt attention. Jaskier understands that most of what he’s received is negative, but even traveling together for such a short amount of time, Jaskier’s seen his reaction to positive. The thankful mother of a child he’d saved from a mauling kikimore had had Geralt trying to extricate himself with the urgency one might have if he found himself in the midst of a ghoul’s next instead of in a woman’s embrace. A young woman with a nice buxom and hair blonde enough to rival the sun had tried flirting with him while they’d shared the same path, and he’d been brutishly unresponsive until she’d given up. Jaskier knows that he meant the bad kind, like of roaming monsters, or other, more mundane type. But still. _

_ “So you’d rather sleep on damp bedrolls, and eat your dinner cold?” _

_ “Hmm.” _

_ I will not complain, Jaskier tells himself. I will be a good traveling companion and deal with it, because I want to keep traveling with him for as long as possible. And while gods know that eventually, they will have to part, he’d like to prolong it for as long as possible.  _

_ “Fine. Dried fruit tastes the same either way, I suppose. But tomorrow-”  _

_ “Tomorrow we will reach Northwinds. There’ll be an inn, and a warm fire inside, I’m sure.” _

_ “And a bath, hopefully.” _

_ Geralt raises an eyebrow, not exactly affronted, but confused nonetheless.  _

_ “Every time we’ve stopped, you’ve ordered a bath, and when we’re near water, you wash up. It’s the only thing about you that seems civilized.” _

_ “I can read.” _

_ Jaskier waves his hand dismissively. “So can most peasants. You, however, insist on eating raw meat and wearing the same outfit until it wears itself thin. Though I suppose that’s more of an affront to fashion than civility, my point still stands.” _

_ Geralt makes a noise that’s probably a chuckle. Jaskier’s been learning, but Geralt is still frustratingly withholding with his emotives, making it difficult to read him. There have been some changes since that night. Geralt isn’t actively trying to get rid of him, for one, but there are other things that Jaskier wishes for that are unlikely to change.  _

_ Jaskier makes his bed, and deciding that he’d prefer the sleep over the food, decides to settle on a larger breakfast than normal the following morning. He leans back, hands folded behind his head in what he considers a poetic position (or at least, this is how they lie in books and plays when the protagonists camp out under the stars). Above him, the stars are beginning to twinkle, though there’s enough cloud cover to muddle the view. The ground beneath him is more wet than he’d realized. The dampness seeps through, wetting his back and slicking his hair.  _

_ A breeze starts to pick up, fierce and hard, and while he might have found it pleasurable previously, it calls up a shiver so violent, it might as well be winter.  _

_ Jaskier doesn’t have a blanket. It’s generally warm enough for him to not need one, and even if he did, he probably wouldn’t carry one. Roach, as Geralt has so often reminded him, is not his horse. He’s not entitled to the limited space in his saddlebags, and things he carries often get left behind in the heat of things.  _

_ He regrets his earlier pragmatism. There were quite a few nice, thick blankets in the mayor’s home. He doubts it would have mattered if he’d taken one. If only he could tell his past self to take that nice, fluffy fur hanging over the chair near the back door instead of leaving it behidn to be pillaged with the rest of his things. _

_ “You’re cold.” Geralt says, his voice breaking the silence so suddenly, it makes Jaskier start. _

_ “Yes? How’d you know?” _

_ “I can hear your teeth chattering, and your,” Jaskier doesn’t have to look at him to know the face he’s making. “ _ Squirming _.” _

_ “What,” Jaskier frowns, sitting up. Geralt is only a pace or so away, his yellow eyes fixated on Jaskier as he lays on his side. They seem to glow in the moonlight that lays over him like a blanket. “Are you going to offer me your blanket like some valient knight?” _

_ Geralt snorts. “We can share.” _

_ Now it’s Jaskier’s turn to laugh.  _

_ “You-” But he doesn’t because Geralt’s face is all too serious. Like he actually means it or something. “Really?” _

_ Geralt lifts his arm, parting the threadbare, but there, blanket high enough for Jaskier to slip between. Jaskier doesn’t spurn the invitation, and leaves his wet bedroll behind to slide in beside him.  _

_ Geralt grunts. Adjusts himself until he’s comfortable, one arm ghosting across his side, but not quite touching.  _

_ “We’re friends, Geralt. Spooning for warmth is a platonic activity.” He says, as much for reminding himself as for Geralt’s sake.  _

_ The arm rests on his side. Geralt is, despite his size, not entirely warm, but he’s warm enough to stave off the night’s chill. It’s enough to let Jaskier fall asleep, pushed along by his exhaustion from walking for days on end.  _

_ His sleep is dreamless. When Jaskier wakes, he feel’s Geralt’s warmth behind him and remembers where he is and what he is doing, and who the hard length pressed against his ass belongs to.  _

_ It’s not as if it is Jaskier’s first time in this position, though it is generally in a bed rather than on a forest floor. However, it is his first time being in this position with Geralt, who is barely his friend, and not even close to being the type that comes with benefits.  _

_ He freezes, and then relaxes, realizes that moving away would be just as damning as staying still. It’s normal to be aroused when it’s chilly, and there’s a warm body pressed against your front, and it’s morning. It means nothing, he tells himself, it really doesn’t. Geralt shifts slightly, pressing closer to him as the arm draped around his shoulder curls tighter around him.  _

_ But then, why, if it means nothing, does the feeling of it, of  _ him _ , pressed close against Jaskier make him so aroused in return? He likes Geralt, sure, but Jaskier falls into infatuations as often as the sun rises. He feels wholeheartedly, and moves on when it inevitably passes. He’s never been the type to linger on somewhere that he’s not wanted.  _

_ Except for now. Except for Geralt.  _

_ What makes him so special? _

_ Geralt wakes up.  _

_ Jaskier isn’t looking, but he can tell by the way that he moves backwards and away in one stilted movement. He came to understand their position just about as fast as Jaskier did. He closes his eyes, and keeps his breathing even, and waits.  _

_ Geralt slides away out the other side, adjusts the blanket over him, and goes off somewhere, presumingly to deal with his own problem. Jaskier counts to one hundred, stretches over exaggeratedly, and sets off in the exact opposite direction to do the same.  _

Geralt cuts down the drowners with efficiency, and after rummaging through their corpses for usable pieces, piles them up and burns them. There’s no less beauty or gracefulness than usual. But his mind doesn’t latch onto the details like it does usually. Oh, he notes the sword, and the bodies, and the blood, but not the way the sun glints on them, or the way the air curdles with their scent. 

He watches Geralt walk across the beach, and up to the house. There’s a splattering of blood across his cheekbones and staining his hair, and it covers his arms up to his elbows. Sand clings to his boots, and with each step, they squelch wetly. 

“Is the beach safe?”

“It’s drowner-free.” A non-answer if there ever was one. 

Well, he’ll take what he can get.

Jaskier pulls off his boots, and his breeches, and piles them on the chair Geralt had used earlier, along with his doublet. Geralt watches him until he’s down to his undergarments, and apparently finding his state of being in undergarments more awkward than the actual act of undressing, looks away, arms crossed. 

“What are you doing?”

“Well, one doesn’t go swimming in full attire, do they? It’s not like I have an appropriate swimsuit to wear at the moment.”

Geralt blinks. “You were serious.”

“Why, of course. Care to join me?” He flicks his eyes downward to the small puddle forming at Geralt’s feet. “You might even wash your clothes. There might be a scent of brine about them, but I’m sure that anything’s better than wearing blood crusted leather.”

“Hmm.”

“You might avoid scaring whatever milkmaid we run into on our way into town.” Jaskier adds, jesting. 

“Salt isn’t good for leather.”

“Bloody witchers aren’t good for business.” Jaskier counters. 

Geralt ruminates as he grabs a basin of rags from the stove, and wraps what looks like several smashed brains into them. 

“Well?” Jaskier drawls. 

It occurs to him that he is standing in his underwear in the home of a dead family while a witcher packs the organs of dead monsters in his saddle bags to bring to market the next day. Along with that realization is the knowledge that he probably looks ridiculous, but at the moment, he doesn’t care. He just wants to convince said witcher to go swimming with him. 

Finally,  _ finally _ , Geralt unbuttons his tunic. “Fine.”

Jaskier grins so wide that it hurts. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I specifically want to thank you all for commenting! Especially those of you who don't usually do so! Even a smiley face, a copy-pasted line that you liked, or a simple 'I liked this chapter' really makes my day, and in these times, well, we all need a little positivity. Hello to those of you who came through tumblr! I hope you all enjoy this chapter because there's uh, a lot. 
> 
> Don't forget to comment, and stay safe!

Despite the lack of human company, Jaskier feels oddly bare as he climbs down the wooden boardwalk to the sand. The feeling is odd, to say the least. It’s not like he’s a modest or shy person. He’s run off wearing less than this from the ire of one of his lover’s angered spouses, has done so enough for any lingering modesty to be lost in the process. And yet, here he is. 

Marching down the worn wooden stairs of a tragedy stricken coastal village on a late summer day with Geralt not far behind. He is similarly in a state of undress, and still smeared with blue-black blood from his recent kill. Even without looking, that knowledge makes his stomach ache like he’s been struck with a bad case of indigestion. Or maybe one of those aphrodisiacs they sing about in lewd songs, because his stomach isn’t the only thing reacting.

The sand is warm between his toes, and the shoreline is mostly clean, unlike the trash that clutters the shorelines of the city beaches he’d visited in his youth. There are dark stains where the drowners had been slain, though the bodies are gone now. Jaskier turns on his heel, maintaining his speed as he walks backwards. 

“You ever take a swim here before?”

“Hmm.” Jaskier translates that to mean ‘no’. 

“It’s kind of a waste to not enjoy it. It’s not often that one gets to use a private beach.”

Geralt’s bundle of blood stained leathers are laid across one arm, his swords uncharacteristically left on the table of the humble abode they’ve decided to claim for the night. Probably because of the salt, Jaskier thinks, as he tries to make the path his eyes take less obvious. Scars litter Geralt’s chest, and while he’s seen this before, they seem to shimmer differently in the sun, catching Jaskier’s gaze as his eyes lower towards his beltline and-

No. Friends don’t look at friends like that. And it is obvious that Geralt barely, if at all, thinks of him as one. 

“Well,” Jaskier coughs. It’s a light, fake sound to fill the silence he’s let linger too long, but he doesn’t worry. Geralt is as oblivious as they come, and not the type to dwell on the meanings of such things. “I suppose being late is better than never.”

Water laps at his ankles. Jaskier turns, moves as fast as the water allows, and dives as soon as it’s deep enough. He scrapes his knees on the sandbank. When he surfaces, the salt only barely stings his eyes. 

“Be careful,” Geralt warns, as he wades more carefully into the water. When he hits knee depth, he kneels and begins to clean. “It’s dangerous.” He rubs his fingers against the still damp stains, and the blood spreads away from him like oil.

“Wasn’t that the point of you being here? To kill all of the danger? Unless you mean the water itself.” Jaskier trills nonchalantly. “I can swim, Geralt.” He backstrokes as if to prove his point, and when he sits up, his hair presses slick against the back of his neck. 

“So you can.” Geralt agrees. 

Jaskier turns onto his back, his arms crossed behind his head. The water is calm, and still, and he doesn’t fear a rogue wave washing over him, so he watches Geralt instead. His arms tense as he digs his fingers into the shoulder of his armor, causing a thin line of flesh to fall free. His fingers, despite the calluouses, are gentle but insistent. Geralt’s not one to initiate touch, but watching them move only serves to make Jaskier more aware of his burgeoning attraction to him.

It’s not been that long. Only what? A few weeks. A month at best. But Jaskier has always been the type to fall in love as easy as song leaves his mouth, and Geralt is… well, hard not to be attracted to. 

Jaskier realizes suddenly that he is human, and Geralt is not. Geralt will continue living, no matter the famines that wreck the country side, or the wars that ravage the lands as periodical as rain, for hundreds of years more. And Jaskier, well, he will either grow old and die, or will become yet another casualty. He’s never been one to shy away from his mortality before, but now, the thought of it makes him ache with something sharp and painful that he’s never felt before. Whatever time he has with Geralt will never be enough. 

So, yes, he tells himself. It is an attraction he feels. He acknowledges it. It’s the carnal sort, not the kind from his heart. It’s a lie of course, but he’s always been good at putting on a show for others, and even better at those for himself. Because what good would it be to fall in love with someone like this?

Geralt stands, apparently done with cleaning, or rather, given the lack of soap, rinsing his armor. He sets them out to dry on the splintering stairs of the boardwalk, where the water will climb to when the tide comes in. Jaskier sees his beach day growing dreadfully boring without his company. Standing abruptly, he slips, falling onto his back with a splash that is the opposite of the graceful persona he’d meant to exude. The noise apparently doesn’t draw Geralt’s attention, because he’s still looking out over the village as if it’s a prettier sight than the beach itself.

He stands, dripping wet and feeling quite like a sodden mop, and gestures to the water. “Swim with me.”

Geralt still doesn’t look over. Instead, he kneels, picking up the things he’d just sat down. Even from the water, Jaskier can see the sand dusting it. “Time to go.” 

“Geralt?” A breeze runs across his shoulders and the back of his neck. A shudder wracks through him as the sun ducks behind a cloud, casting shadows below.

“Get out of the water.” 

Geralt’s voice brokers no argument. 

Jaskier trods out of the water, squinting in the direction of the houses, but he can’t see anything out of place. Something off in the distance gleams. 

“What’s wrong?” He asks, voice hushed in response to Geralt’s quickly souring mood. 

“Get dressed, get ready to go. We’ll head for the inn to get my coin, and then up the coast. You can have your beach day then.”

Lots of words from someone who’s vocabulary is generally confined to ‘fuck’ and ‘hmm’. It’s confusing, startling even, but he trusts Geralt, and so he listens.

He trudges behind him towards the house, sand sticking to his shins and feet. His undergarments hang wet and heavy, uncomfortable now that he’s free from the water. The houses are all still empty. No lights are on inside their windows, which reflect the blue, cloudless sky like mirrors. He can’t see any people walking about, not even a heedless child, interested in watching the Witcher work from a safe distance. 

Confused, but trusting, he follows Geralt into their house. He locks the door behind them, and dries his armor with a quick blast of aard. 

“Geralt,” Jaskier calls as he peels off his wet things, and slides on the rest of his clothes. It sticks to his moistened skin, but he hardly notices. “Geralt, what’s wrong? What’s the rush?”

“There’s fifteen men hiding near the main square. They mean to rob me, I’d assume.”

“You don’t even have the coin yet.”

Geralt is already dressed. A thin sheen of salt sprinkles onto the ground as he slides his swords back on. “We’ll head out though the forest, circle back to the inn at the crossroads, and go to the next town. Best to avoid confrontation, if we can.”

Geralt is amazing, a fighter the likes of which most people could never comprehend without seeing, but even so, fifteen men is quite a lot. If Jaskier were to add something of the sort to a ballad, well, the songs about the Butcher of Blaviken are expected to more or less ‘enhanced’ for entertainment. No one would believe him any more than they’d believe him if he said he’d met a dragon. If they managed to round up that many for their little mugging, it shows planning. No wonder Geralt wants to leave so quickly. 

“Okay,” Jaskier agrees, sliding his lute case over his shoulder. His hair is still dripping salt into his eyes, making them water. “Off we go then!”

Geralt roughly shoves the back window open, making the frame creak, and with more maneuverability than anyone wearing that much metal and leather should have, slides through, landing in the wetlands on the other side with a muted splash. 

“Course we couldn’t take the front door,” Jaskier mutters as he grabs onto the frame, and dangles his legs down. “Course we have to take the hard way.” But even as he says it, he knows it makes sense. The longer they remain out of sight, the longer they can avoid being drawn into a fight. He peeks below, notes that it’s only logically a three foot drop, though it looks much worse, and lets go. He lands with a much louder splash than his companion. Mud to stain the heels of his boots. 

Geralt’s waiting for him just over in the forest. He can see that pale mug of his through the hanging ivy draping the trees. Jaskier runs after him, his lute swinging uncomfortably against his back. 

“So much for a beach day,” Jaskier sighs. “And the weather was so nice too.”

Geralt snorts. “Only you would find a beach stained with blood something to marvel at.”

If you weren’t there, He thinks, somewhat ruefully, I would not find it nearly as interesting. 

By the time they reach the inn, it’s late in the afternoon. The sun lies low in the sky as it nears the golden hour, drenching the inn and the road in a gorgeous yellow hue. Jaskier’s clothes are damp, and beneath the scent of salt is sweat, making for an altogether unpleasant scent. Geralt isn’t much better. Despite his superhuman endurance, he’s had to keep pace with Jaskier, with his senses primed to their fullest range in search of impending attack, and to be quite fair, no one smells delightful after a swim in the ocean.

Roach is still in his stable, along with their bags. Abruptly, he remembers the sack of food he’d left behind in their haste to leave, and realizes that dinner will have to be on Geralt for the night. He wonders if he can talk him into a bath? Surely they won’t attack at an inn like this one, where there is little room for strategic maneuvering, and bystanders aplenty. 

“Think we can get a bath before setting off again? And we need provisions, unless you intend on hunting for every meal for the next week.”

Geralt hums as he approaches the counter. The few customers dotting the lobby watch warily as they pass by. 

“Mutt,” One of the men says into his cup. Jaskier glares at him, hand wrapped around the neck of his lute like a blungedon, silently daring him to speak again. 

Instead, his expression grows more sour, and he turns away, hunching over his ale like a goblin guarding it’s hovel. 

Pleased, he skips forward to catch up with Geralt. He looks more like a golem than a man, standing stiff with his arms crossed in front of the bar, as if daring the innkeep to try and make him move. The innkeep himself is frowning, his hand twitching towards his belt as if to reach for the dagger at his side. 

“That’s all yer gettin’. S’all the town handed over to me. Yer welcome to take it up with the alderman, but I’s got nothin to do with it.”

Geralt is not unkind. If a group cannot afford to pay, he takes what they can offer. But the sack of coin sitting on the table between them is obviously much less than what was promised, and it seems to Jaskier that it’s meant to be an insult. A taunt, even, if they expect Geralt to fall for such an obvious trap. 

The man in question remains silent for a moment more, and then swipes the coin away, sticking it somewhere in his armor, out of easy reach. He says not another word to the innkeep, but mutters to Jaskier, “Leaving in ten minutes,” as he heads back to the stables. 

The innkeep turns to Jaskier, sheepish, and much more kindly than he had to Geralt. “Need anything? A room for the night won’t cost ye much. S’not like we’s been gettin’ many customers this time o’ year.”

Jaskier pulls out a barstool, shakes his head. Leaning over, he digs through his boot to pull out a few coins. He doesn’t have much on him now, as their last time in town, he’d paid for the room, and it looks like he’ll be playing no songs tonight. “Some cheese, and bread, if you have any. Anything that’ll keep on the road would be wonderful.”

Behind him, the door closes.

“Hmm.” The innkeeper says, and Jaskier almost laughs at how similar he and Geralt sound. The man digs under the counter, and sets a modest amount of food in front of him, and then a moment later, sets a sack beside them. “Here.”

Content with their exchange, Jaskier packs his purchases in the sack, and turns towards the door to join Geralt when he realizes: Something is off. The customers that were sitting around the bar moments ago are gone, though their cups remain. Jaskier walks over to where the glaring man had sat, and peers into his cup. Water, not ale. 

He jerks up, and peers out of the greasy window. Over by the stables, Geralt is surrounded, his back to the wall at a crowd of men- too many men- surround him in an armed semi-circle. They have yet to get close. He supposes that they’re trying to convince Geralt to give it up, likely thinking he’s gotten some large sum. Between them all, it can’t be more than a piece of gold or two each.

“Fuck.” 

There are better men to have by his side in times like these, for Jaskier is better at wounding with his words than with weapons, but an anger strikes him like something venomous and hot, and as he slides out the door, there are no words in his mind, no plans. Nothing except that sour, fiercely protective feeling filling him like water in the lungs of a drowner. 

There’s an odd kind of distance between him and this sudden, intense need to  _ do something _ . It feels like he’s an audience member watching a play, but the anger, and below that, the concern, are painful and hot behind his eyes. He sees himself push through the door, feels the warm air press against his face, hears the call of the innkeep behind him, and the insults of the men ahead of him. There are knives and swords and maces, not glinting, but gleaming like oil over thick layers of rust, and there is a man. A man a head taller than Jaskier, with curly red hair yells at Geralt, reaching for a twisted short sword at his waist. ‘Fucking mutant scum’, he says, not turning as Jaskier raises his lute, and then watching as it dents over his head, bringing a darker, more violent red to the surface of his scalp. 

And then there is a man charging him from the side, and a wall behind him, and no air in his lungs. 

And he panics, scrambling for the dagger he keeps in his boots in case of emergencies, and thank Melitile he grabs it, but as he jabs it into the man’s gut, he only winces, pulls it out, and returns the favor, jabbing upward into Jaskier’s gut. It hurts more than anything he’s ever felt before.

And he’s scratching at his face, clawing at the arm pressed to his face.

And then that arm is around his neck, and he can’t breathe, and the pain in his side is growing sharper and as it reaches towards a crescendo like the inverse of a climax, it feels almost like going to sleep. 

###

“He’s dead,” Triss says carefully, as if giving the words volume will shatter Geralt’s carefully crafted mask of okayness. Her thin fingers run over his collarbone, and up his neck, where the veins pop out, dark and purple against his sun kissed skin. In death, it is unnaturally pale. “From asphyxiation?”

Geralt was watching. He remembers the details with crystalline clarity. “Yes.”

“And you called me how long after?”

“Can you fix him?”

“How long has he been dead?” Triss insists. Those long, slender fingers reach up to cup his cheek in a show of endearment rarely bestowed upon him, except post-coitus. “I can do a lot of things, Geralt, but if he crosses the veil, not even chaos can bind him here again.”

“Ten minutes.”

Triss pulls back, all business, and cracks her knuckles. “I can work with that. Go find something living. A deer or some such. Bring it back in less than an hour. Can you do that?”

Geralt doesn’t have the energy to be insulted by her tone. Instead, he nods, pulls out his sword, and sets out into the woods around the town. It is vacated now. Before they’d tried to kill him, they’d sent their women and children, and other non combatants to the neighboring village where the Butcher of Blaviken could not harm them. There might be a chance that a doe stumbled close to town because of the lack of occupation.

His boots squelch as he steps over the bodies lying prone in the streets. Their blood soaks the path, luckily flowing downstream, and away from the water supply. Good for the inhabitants, but more importantly, good for Triss. He may know little of magic beyond his cantrips, but he does understand that water is powerful. Powerful enough to save Jaskier even.

Geralt needs to focus. If there’s anything nearby, he’ll only have to concentrate to find them, and yet, an anger, unbridled and stronger than anything he’d felt before, fills him.

He remembers it all too well.

Ten men in front of him, a wall to his back. While most would have considered it a disadvantage, he’d found that not having anyone able to attack from behind useful. It would be easy to take down the left most man first. His dagger left him open for attack more so than the others, and in an uneven fight, finishing enemies off was more important than how it was done.

And Jaskier, he’d been in the inn still, unaware that they’d walked themselves into a trap. Except he hadn’t. Behind the ringleader, a tall, burly man with red hair- Jaskier raised his lute, and with a loud and discordant twang, brought it down over his head.

The man fell like a rock, and for a few moments, everyone was still unable to comprehend Jaskier’s sudden, startling action.

And then-

And then-

Hands around Jaskier’s throat, and a dagger in the side of his blue doublet, air leaving his lungs just as fast as blood left his body.

And Geralt fought, but panic- no, concern- made him sloppy and it took too long and by the time the last of them had fallen, his skin was already beginning to cool.

Over in the bushes, a half click away. A deer.

Geralt snaps toward it, and as his sword reaches for it’s flank, he remembers that Triss hadn’t told him if it had to be alive or not. Instead, he sneaks from behind, slips a rope around its neck, and leads it back.

He can’t recall how much time has passed.

Triss doesn’t look up as the door opens, just gestures to the other side of the table Geralt has set Jaskier on.

The blood has stained his blue doublet into a violent purple. Geralt reaches for him- to do what, exactly, he doesn’t know.

“Don’t.” Triss’s face gleams with sweat as she looks to him, eyes gleaming. “I’ve almost got him. He hurts.” Something like empathy shines in her eyes. “He’s not supposed to hurt like this.”

Geralt doesn’t know how to respond to that. He wants to kill the man who’d hurt him again, but his body is already growing cold.

Instead, he asks, “What do you need me to do?”

“You can’t do anything. I’m sorry, Geralt, but all you can do is wait. Somewhere else, preferably.”

Geralt… Does not like that.

“Why?”

“Geralt…” Triss says warningly. The scent of magic is thick and pungent in the air. If he uses his senses, he can feel it too, like heat shimmering off the ground.

He leaves.

He waits.

Time passes, though he knows not how much.

Eventually, there are screams.

Even later, there is silence.

His own body feels like he’s ill, burning just under the surface like a fire was set under his skin.

Finally the door opens, and Triss slips out into the night. She smells of sweat and burning magic. Her eyes are old and weary.

Geralt’s knees are weak because this was a long shot. Of course it was. He let the bard follow him around and now he’s dead and his only friend- why did he never tell him that before?- is dead.

“He’s sleeping,” She says, slumping against the doorframe. “But when he wakes, you need to talk.”

Relief floods his system like blood would flow in any other man. He lurches forward, reaching blindly, and as his hand touches the frame above her, steadying himself, that’s when he notices it. A mark like a burn long healed on the back of his hand, shaped like a bird.

He raises an inquisitive glance to Triss, still set on seeing Jaskier with his own eyes, and she looks away.

“After,” she says. “We’ll talk of it after.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for commenting! Your kind words, along with my unprecedented amount of free time, have allowed me to write a lot more than normal. If you've ever followed me or subscribed to other stories, then you know how long of a wait there usually is between chapters, so this kind of surprised me as well. 
> 
> Feel free to follow me on tumblr, either to just say 'hi' or to request fics or whatever. I hope you all enjoy, and don't forget to comment!

“I was dead,” Jaskier says, uncharacteristically quiet. His voice is hollow; like the wind is whistling behind his words. “I don’t remember it. I remember the dying, I mean. Not the being dead part.”

“You wouldn’t,” The kind eyed woman says as she flutters around the kitchen of the inn, adding herbs and strange smelling liquids to a pot on the stove. Jaskier can’t tell if she’s just cooking, or making a potion of some sort. “You were only gone for a few minutes. It takes longer to leave this plane of existence behind.”

The innkeeper had been gone when Jaskier awoke on the counter of the bar, likely scared off by the massacre outside, and there is no one else in this town but the three of them. It’s an odd feeling, to be in a place meant to be filled with noise and company, and to have it be empty and near silent instead. 

He stretches, and feels the stitches in his side flex uncomfortably with the movement. The pain that accompanies it is muted and dull, like overhearing a conversation through a wall. 

“And this?” He asks, raising his hand. On the back of his right hand, just a few shades darker than his own sun kissed skin, is the faint outline of a wolf, undeniably similar to Geralt’s necklace. It looks like a healed brand, though he knows for a fact it wasn’t there before… before he died. 

The woman- Triss, he thinks Geralt had called her- pauses in her stirring like an animal about to be speared. Her bottom lip tilts somewhat in what might be a frown. 

“I- Geralt might be able to explain it to you better.” Distractingly, she gestures at his lute, impossibly perfect as her eyes dart to the Witcher. “I fixed what I could. Geralt.”

Jaskier looks to Geralt, who stands with his arms crossed beside him, eyes flickering towards the door as if afraid someone else might burst through to finish off what they’d started. Jaskier had awoken in that woman’s arms, had felt Geralt’s hand grasping his own, but he’d said not a word. “Is it something bad? I’m not going to turn into a monster of some sort, am I?”

“No, no, nothing like that, I just,” She glances at Geralt who has yet to interrupt, and then sighs, running her fingers through her hair, pushing loose strands from her face. She straightens up, moving the pot from the stove, and sets it down on the counter before moving to stand beside him. “Jaskier,” Her voice is soft, the kind of tenor that would well suit a romantic ballad. It doesn’t ease the butterflies in his stomach, fluttering faintly behind the ice that has yet to leave his veins. “I brought you back, and you hadn’t exactly crossed the veil yet, so it wasn’t horribly difficult, but there was a complication.”

“A complication?”

She glances to Geralt again, but if he had looked disinclined to speak before, well, now he looks like his expression was carved in stone. “I’m not sure, exactly what happened, or what I did. This kind of magic is… finicky at best. Whatever I did, I did it to you and to Geralt. I don’t think it’s harmful, but,” She hesitates, uncertainty as obvious on her face as the blood painting the streets outside. “I don’t know.”

Jaskier lets out a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding. “So that’s it? I’m not dead now, no strings attached.”

“More or less.” Triss agrees. She turns to her pot, pours him a large, steaming cup, and hands it over. “Now drink. Just standing near you has me feeling cold.”

Jaskier does as he is told as Geralt places a hand on Triss’ shoulder, and jerks his head towards the door. They step outside, and by the time they return, he’s finished the bitter tasting drink, and warmth has begun to gather in his fingertips. 

“It was nice to meet you, Jaskier,” Triss says with a warm smile. There is still worry in her gaze, but she says nothing of it as she refills his cup. “Finish this, and get some rest. Hopefully the next time we meet, it will be under better circumstances.”

“It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Thank you very much for saving my life.”

With a movement of her hand, the world splits open, a gleaming circle cutting a doorway to a hall of light. She slips through, and then Jaskier and Geralt are alone. 

Jaskier opens his mouth, unsure of what to say, but Geralt speaks over him, his voice tight and even.

“That was stupid. Incredibly stupid. Were you really that thoughtless to think you could somehow win that fight?”

“I-”

“You died. Whatever fun little adventure you think this is- it’s over. I’m not going to be responsible for your dying.” He rummages through his clothes, and tosses a sack of coin- the coin this whole thing had started for- on the table beside him. “Take the coin. Go home.”

The warmth has reached his stomach, and skipped along to his cheeks. He feels undercooked. He feels raw. And yet, the sting of those words, so similar to his father’s dismissals and his mother’s urging manages to hurt nonetheless. 

“I-” Jaskier stammers. Words run through his mind, but do not catch. _ But Geralt I love you- We’re friends, aren’t we? I’m grateful, but please don’t make me leave. Please don’t leave me. _ “I won’t.”

“I don’t care where you go. There are plenty of taverns between here and Velen. Pick a direction and walk.”

“Geralt, I won’t.” He says, more insistently. He stands, using the table to steady himself, and crosses the distance between them. He holds his upper arm, and because he’s shaking,  _ that must be it _ , Geralt doesn’t pull away. “I’m not leaving. This was an accident. It’s my fault, I tried to help and that’s because I’m your friend. Even if you’re not mine.” Especially if I’m not your friend.

The room is dim, with only a few dying candles to push back against the shadows. Outside, the night is dark. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howls. 

“I can’t make you leave. If you still want to walk with me,” Geralt shifts his weight. “Fine. But you need to carry a weapon about you. Learn to fight long enough to not die if you’re going to insist on jumping in after me.”

“Lot’s of words from you tonight,” Jaskier comments idly. Geralt gives him a look. The look, actually, the kind that brokers no more jests, no more arguments. Jaskier’s knees are weak, and the wound in his side aches. “Yes, of course, whatever you want, I’ll do it. I’ll even learn how to swing a sword.”

“Hmm,” Geralt positions Jaskier to have an arm over his shoulder, and half leads, mostly carries him up the stairs. Jaskier is thankful for the illusion of carrying himself on his own, because to admit that his friend has saved him, and is carrying him like a damsel to a bedroom would be too much to bear. “Rest.

Jaskier does, and thankfully, does not dream. 

He doesn’t sleep long. 

In the morning, his body feels normal, in that he feels very acutely the pain in his side, and on his neck. When he opens his mouth to speak, he feels the burn of his ravaged windpipe, likely made worse from the night before when he hadn’t been aware of his injury.

There’s a bucket of water by the foot of his bed, and as he strips and washes, his eyes keep flickering to the wound on his side, and the brand on his hand. The wound is still raw, still hurting. But the skin around it is pale and tender, and as he trails his fingers over the raised stitches, he can’t help but think:

_ I was dead. That was it for me. _

It’s a hallowing realization. 

A gaping darkness, the kind that usually rears its ugly head after Jaskier is kicked from a paramour’s bed, and realizes just how fickle the world is, rages inside of him. Just as quickly as it roars, he shuts it down. 

There’s a plain, white shirt hanging the edge of the chair in the corner to replace his bloodstained doublet. It’s not fashionable. It’s not his type. But it’s clean, and that’s all he really needs, he supposes. His pants have a bit of a stain crusted around the hem, but when he tucks the shirt into them, it’s more or less covered. 

He grabs his lute, and heads downstairs.

Geralt looks up with surprise when Jaskier reaches the end of the steps, as if he hadn’t heard his moving around prior to his appearance. Unusual, because Geralt has never made a point of hiding his unnatural abilities from him, and as far as Jaskier knows, it’s within the limits of his senses. But for whatever reason, he looks almost startled as Jaskier takes a seat at the nearest table. 

“You weren’t thinking of leaving me, were you?”

It’s not the words that he’d meant to say. No, Jaskier had meant to try and erase the emotional turmoil from the night before; to wash away the effects of his near-death experience, of Geralt’s attempt to leave him, of the declaration he’d made so boldly. 

Geralt looks startled. He sets down the chunk of stolen bread he’d been chewing on, and turns to face him.

“No. Thought to let you sleep a bit longer,” He tosses another loaf Jaskier’s way that he barely manages to catch. “But since you’re up, we should set off soon.”

Ah, so they aren’t going to talk about it. That’s fine. Nothing Jaskier would like more than to not talk about it. 

“Where are we off to?” 

“Blackcliffe. More drowners. It’s bigger than here.” Geralt slips behind the counter to filch more supplies. The sack that Jaskier had bought the day before is still there, looking more full than it had previously. “Are you… better?”

Jaskier flexes his fingers. He still feels weird; that’s undeniable. But he feels better. He feels alive again. 

“I can walk,” He says, answering the question that Geralt had actually meant to ask. “It’s just one town over, after all. I’m a dead man walking, not some damsel in need of a carriage and footmen.”

Geralt grunts, slings the sack over his shoulder, and jabs a thumb towards the door. “Take one of the horses. No need to walk, dead man or not.”

As Jaskier watches Geralt step through the door, he feels a sense of uneasiness wash over him like a bucket of cold water. He shoves it aside, and swipes the bread he’s yet to stomach as he follows after. 

###

_ ‘Dead man on dancing feet _

_ Smiles plenty, and never admits defeat _

_ He strums his lute, and keeps his secrets close _

_ For what dead men know, no others may hold.’ _

Jaskier can’t sing the words yet, but he can strum, and he can hum, and write them down as they pass through his head. He’s not sure (he’s very sure, actually) if he wants to share his own story with anyone. While he does believe that including himself in his songs adds passion that would not otherwise be there, this feels personal. It feels close. It reminds him of falling asleep, but with darkness falling over his eyes heavier than sleep ever could.

Geralt doesn’t comment on Jaskier’s strumming. He just rides Roach, slightly ahead of Jaskier. Occasionally a sigh escapes him, but beyond that, he is silent.

There is no reason for Jaskier to feel unsettled, or anxious even. 

They’d taken a path through the woods to cut across to another road, heading opposite the town Geralt had guessed the other villagers had sought refuge at while their men went off to try and rob him. The day is nice, just as it had been yesterday, with the sun just barely above the horizon in the East, casting twinkling rays through the openings of the trees. There are forget-me-nots, and dandelions growing in bursts by the side of the road, and birds singing off in the trees. It’s a nice day. And yet, Jaskier does not feel nice. 

It could be the day before. The events he’s trying so hard not to verbalize, and how Geralt had reacted. ‘Go home,’ he’d said. Go away, he’d meant. 

Geralt seemed to enjoy his company well enough until now. He hadn’t complained beyond what could be considered friendly and healthy jibing. And yes, he had yet to say, ‘you are my friend’, but Jaskier has slept in the same bed as him. He has seen the man naked, has sewn up the wounds he could not reach. If he was truly unwanted, Jaskier would know, and he would have left. 

No matter how much he wants to stay by his side, he won’t be like a burr attached to his boots. That would be pitiful, and Jaskier refuses to become a person so tragic. He goes over their time together- mind drifting back to the beach, and that morning, and the feel of the Witcher’s hand in his own, and finally, shoves it all aside. It can be dealt with later. Right now, he focuses on riding. 

By the time they stop, it’s dark out, but Jaskier doesn’t mind. His wound hurts from being jostled, but his feet don’t hurt. He could be worse. 

Geralt tosses Jaskier his things, and for his credit, Jaskier doesn’t ask about starting a fire. He’s aware that it’s likely there are still men looking for them. No need to make it easier for them. 

Jaskier tears off a piece of bread, wets his tongue with stolen wine. “How’d you meet her? The witch?”

“Sorceress.” 

“How’d you meet her?” He insists. “She doesn’t seem like the kind of woman you’d make friends with on the road.”

Geralt is tearing into a slab of meat obviously intended for stew. It’s not bloody (thankfully), but it’s raw and still disconcerning to watch. 

“On a contract.” 

Of course he wouldn’t give Jaskier details. Why would he ever do that without a sword to his neck? 

“She seems nice,” Jaskier says earnestly, and then more quietly, he asks, “Are you… involved with her?”

Geralt chokes. Jaskier waits. 

“No.”

Jaskier was expecting a ‘we’re friends’, or something, but at least if Geralt is unwilling to name what is obviously a friendly relationship as being a friendship, it puts whatever he has with Jaskier into perspective. So it’s fine. It’s okay. Whatever Geralt says, they  _ are _ friends. He’s just emotionally stunted.

“Well, she seems like a swell friend to have. A bard and a sorceress and a witcher. Sounds like characters in a tragic play. Or perhaps a comedy, given your,” Jaskier’s voice cracks and grates, aching painfully still from the night before. He coughs to clear his throat, but it hurts enough to make him wince. “Given your social skills.” 

“You should rest more.” Geralt says, instead of rising to the bait. “It would be rude for you to keel over after she worked so hard to fix you.” 

“I-” Another round of coughing that makes the stitches ache even worse than before. Dots of red stain his borrowed shirt.

Geralt stands abruptly, and hands Jaskier a flask. “Drink this, and  _ rest _ .” He says, somewhat forcefully.

“Fine,” Jaskier relents. He takes a long sip, and coughs at the bitter taste. Despite it, his throat aches a little less when he hands it back. “What is that?”

“Potion. From Triss.”

A wave of exhaustion twinged with more of that odd regret washes over him. Jaskier arranges his bedroll, and lays down on his back. He blinks lazily, watches the stars shift behind the waving branches above him, and then it is morning. 

“What was in that?” Jaskier asks as he sits up. The words are thick in his mouth, like his tongue doesn’t work. It takes a moment to blink away the drink’s hold. In that time, Geralt doesn’t respond. “Geralt?” 

The sun is wrong. It’s late morning, not the early hours that they usually travel in. And the horses- there’s only one, Jaskier’s mare. 

He feels cold. Not distant this time, but the cool kind of anger that wracks through a person like the wild hunt’s standing beside them. He’s alone. Geralt has left him, and now he’s alone. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your comments guys! I've been a bit busy working, and juggling school among other things, and this chapter particularly was hard to write because it's a transition to the next part of the story, but it's done! Just a heads up, I do not tag things because I feel that they spoil the story. I choose not to use archive warnings for a reason, and well, this is a hurt and comfort story, after all. 
> 
> In the next few chapters those things will come into play, so be warned. Violence etc is ahead, and that's as detailed as I'm going to get about it.
> 
> Secondly, I have a youtube channel, and I'd appreciate any likes comments or subscribes on it. username is Runawaysiren940. 
> 
> Thanks, and don't forget to comment.

The panic feels like lead in his veins, like the time he’d tried four grams of fisstech and a bottle of everluce at the same time, and had had the worst, and only hallucinogenic experience of his life. But this is painfully real, unlike the experience he’d had then, and not as easily waved away as something his mind had made up. 

He’s left me, Jaskier thinks, and then ashamedly, chides himself. Geralt had never proven himself to be a liar, not a single time during the time they’ve been traveling together, despite having many an opportunity, or fair reason to do so. The cold touch of death, which he had thought was gone, tingles at his fingertips. Rubbing his hands together, he tells himself to focus. Clean up camp, pack up, and then wait. He can wait. Waiting isn’t hard. It gives Geralt time to come back, if he plans to, and besides, his wound still hurts. If he packs everything up, he can linger for a while longer before accepting that Geralt has left him behind and trudging along to the next town. 

There is a taut soreness around his midsection, spreading far from the wound itself like oil on water, and he feels it acutely as he shakes out and packs away his bedroll. Dust falls from it in thick clouds. Jaskier wrinkles his nose at the sight, resisting the urge to sneeze. He really should’ve washed it when they’d last stopped, but of course, a lot of things had happened, and when they left the inn, his common chores were no longer on his mind. Of course not. But going forward, he really should get his laundry done.

He picks at the unfamiliar fabric of his borrowed shirt, but unwilling to stain the fancy and expensive fabric of his own doublets, he sighs, and leaves it be. The bandages, he should change those next. The glen where they’d made camp is one that obviously sees use often. The grass is worn thin where countless feet have walked to and from the road, and many heads have laid at night. The trees curve around the opening just enough to provide cover from passersby who would not know to look. Bloodmoss grows near the roots of several of the trees, a striking red to the overall green of the area. He winces as he replaces the bandages wrapped around his wound. The edges of the cut are pale, and pink, though it’s no longer bleeding, and the black thread from the stitches are crusted with dried blood. He has no doubt that if he pushes himself, it’ll reopen. Yet another reason to wait. 

Thoughts drift through his mind like leaves on the wind, not quite catching, but making an impact nonetheless. 

_I’m not upset at being left behind_ , he realizes, sometime around mid-morning, when the chores run out, and the stab wound aches faintly, like the ebb and flow of the tide. _I’m upset that he lied._

The words ring hollow, but aren’t entirely untrue. It’s the promises that Geralt had made that sting more than the fact that he’s been left behind. _If he’s left me, and isn’t just out hunting or running an errand_ , Jaskier corrects. Geralt could easily have assumed that whatever was in that drink last night would set him out for much longer, as it had knocked him out rather quickly, and just be running late.

They are excuses, he can admit, that make sense. They could be true. 

But as the day inches on, and it approaches noon, he finds it hard to believe himself, and so finally, Jaskier heaves himself onto the saddle, and sets back on the road. 

Jaskier is unfamiliar with the area, having mostly spent his days in the north, either at home, or at Oxenfurt, but he’s sure that heading back the way they’d come is a bad idea. Even if all of those men are dead, there’s no guarantee that they’re not others, or that word hasn’t spread of the Witcher and his bard. So north. But Geralt has undoubtedly gone the same way. So that leaves, going off path and attempting to travel north without the use of a road, or taking it and finding a place to split off later. 

He’ll get lost, matter what, but he decides on the road. At the very least, there’s a better chance of eventually stumbling in the right direction this way. 

The day is nice, despite his sour mood. The sun is bright, but not so hot as to invite sunburn, and the breeze ghosts over his shoulders like the teasing touch of a paramour. His horse meanders, for the sake of not irritating his wound (by the gods, is he tired of having to think about it), giving him plenty of time to look over his surroundings as he passes. 

Wildflowers, the kind without herbal or medicinal use, line the road, except in places where camps were clearly made at some point previously. Pinks, and purples, mostly, that give the road the feel of one from a fairy tale. All that’s missing is the dark twist; sweets hanging from the trees to tempt children away, or something similarly nefarious. 

If Jaskier has learned anything, it’s that nothing is ever as idyllic as it seems. Even the allure of traveling with a monster hunter was not as he’d first imagined. He’ll not leave on his own, given the choice, but it's clear to him now that there were reasons why witchers travel alone. 

It doesn’t take long to find it. At the first fork in the road, he finds a trail of bloodmoss leading up to the trees lining the side of the road. Nails are hammered around the trunk, about waist height. 

Bloodmoss only grows where blood was spilled, and there has to be enough of it to enrich the soil, which means lots of it must have been spilled here. Jaskier laughs. The sound is surprisingly harsh, though he can’t tell if it’s because of how he feels, or the still sore nature of his throat. What a thing to witness! How well it would fit in one of his ballads, but his muse isn’t here, and he’s all alone, even though Geralt promised him, the bastard, he _promised-_

“You’re bleeding,” Geralt says as Roach steps from the forest onto the road. Something black and viscous drips from Roach’s flank, splattering the wrapped packages tied to the saddle. “Must’ve torn your stitches.”

Geralt leads Roach to the side of the road, and when Jaskeir doesn’t follow, takes the reins of his horse, and leads her over as well. Digging through Jaskier’s bags, he produces a roll of bandages, and gestures to Jaskier to lift his shirt.

Jaskier does. 

His mouth is suddenly dry, and the ache of being left behind is replaced with something like confusion, or perhaps concern. How unlike him, to not be able to tell with precision what it is he feels. It’s forgien, uncomfortable, and maybe that is why, instead of saying, ‘ _You left me, so why are you back?_ ’ or something similarly competent, he asks, “What’s in the bag?”

Geralt glances up, and- oh, isn’t that strange, to be the one looked up at- then back to the task at hand. His fingers are cool against Jaskier’s skin as he peels the pink tinged bandages away, pursing his mouth at the sight.

“A short sword and dagger.”

“And-” He has a sharp intake of breath as Geralt presses a new one to the cut. “And that’s where you went this morning? To buy weapons?”

“Yes. I’d meant to be back sooner but there were drowners harassing a young woman at a lake, and I stopped to deal with it.”

“Of course,” Jaskier says, tugging his shirt back down perhaps a little more harshly than was needed. “Saving damsels in distress. How heroic of you.”

The salt in his voice is unmistakable, though he’d tried his best to hide it. Even for someone as emotionally and socially stunted as Geralt. The witcher frowns, a slight downturn of his mouth, so small that one not well versed in Geralt-ese wouldn’t notice. 

“What did you think I doing?”

“I don’t know. You were gone, and you tried to make me leave not so long ago. I thought-”

“You thought I would go back on my word. You thought I lied to you.”

Jaskier shrugs. 

“I’m not a liar.”

“But you’re not my friend, either.” Jaskier says evenly. A breeze rushes over them, bringing with it something aching and weak that nestles in the pits of his stomach like a nekker making it’s nest in the ruins of a battlefield. “You said so yourself.”

Geralt ruminates. His yellow eyes are narrowed, teeth gritted in what might be a baring of teeth, if he were not a man. 

“Look,” Jaskier fidgets in his saddle, now feeling uncomfortable at Geralt’s upward gaze.”If you don’t want me around, I can leave. I’m sorry for assuming the worst, but what else would I think?”

“Hmm.”

“So that’s a yes then? I-”

Geralt grabs Jaskier’s wrist. His eyes flicker down, notes the bird- a lark, he thinks- branded on the back of his hand, just like the wolf burned on Jaskier's. “You almost died. I don’t want- not because of me. I wear enough blood without yours adding to it. But I don’t- you don’t need to leave.”

Jaskier stops, and carefully, steps down from his horse. The hand doesn’t leave his wrist, despite the slack in Geralt’s grip, as if promising to catch him if he were to misstep and fall. “I can’t read minds, Geralt.” He says. There’s no more venom in his voice, and faintly, he recognizes that he sounds stupid- oh so stupid, and petty against Geralt’s stoniness. “And you didn’t leave a note. I like you- I think you’re smart enough to understand that, and I think you like me too, even if you’re too stubborn to admit it. But I won’t hang around if I think I’m unwanted. I want to stay with you, but I won’t be some sad, pitiful damsel following after you either.”

Geralt is quiet, long enough for the space between Jaskier’s words to grow uncomfortable. Despite the urge to fill the silence, Jaskier remains silent until Geralt finally lets go of his hand, as if surprised to find himself still holding him. “It would be safer for you to leave, live a bard’s life. You have coin. You have songs.”

“I already said, I don’t want to. You’re my friend, and I’ll keep traveling with you, if you want me to. But only if.”

“I can’t ask you to,” Geralt’s voice is tight with frustration. Jaskier feels a wave of regret, distinctly different from the burning shame he normally associates it with. It’s chilled. Remote, he’d even say. “I can’t ask you to because the Path is one I’m meant to walk alone. But if you want to travel with me, then do.”

It’s not the kind of proclamation he wants to hear, but Jaskier thinks this is the closest thing Geralt can manage to admitting that he wants Jaskier around. It occurs to him, suddenly, that there are a lot of things that he doesn’t know about Geralt, or Witchers in general. Only what he’s learned so far, and the myths whispered by gossiping villagers, and that’s not enough. 

“I do,” Jaskier says, committing the memory of Geralt’s burning eyes, and the earnestness of the set of his shoulders. “I really do.”

And finally- finally- it feels like the effects of that night, of the fight and almost death- have let them go.

The next few weeks are a slow return to normalcy- and if the nights are cool, and they share a bedroll, and in the morning, one or another has an erection to show for it, well, there’s no need to speak of it. Just as there’s no need to speak of many things, like the marks on their hands, or the coolness that sometimes returns to the core of Jaskier’s being, unrelenting until human touch drives it away. 

But as things do, the summer must eventually come to an end.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Take notice of how I chose not to use archive warnings. 
> 
> Thanks for reading and commenting.

The honey sweet days of summer are beginning to shift into the frost tinged bite of autumn when they begin to approach Novigrad. This is what Jaskier is most familiar with; villages grown fat on tourism, and bards aplenty, where one can truly determine their worth by the amount of gold at the end of their set in comparison to another’s; bustle and commerce, and beds; beds are perhaps what Jaskier missed the most during their trek through the countryside. 

The Kitten’s Bowl is not one of the many inns he’s familiar with. Geralt’s decision to take a route skirting the line between rural farmland and urban trade route has introduced Jaskier to many places he otherwise would not have graced his presence with. Many of them have been quaint little interludes with the charm of the country, but the superior alcohol of the city, but not here. The tables are worn and covered in marks from errant knives and blades. There are suspicious stains on the floor and wall, which he thinks may be the splatter of blood from a cut to the jugular, and quite frankly, it makes Jaskier feel on edge. There’s a feeling that something is going to go wrong soon, and so, despite the late hour, he resolves to ask Geralt if they can instead travel on. 

As he waits for Geralt’s return, Jaskier plays the first chords of ‘Toss a Coin’, but the dirty look he receives from the barkeep as she pours him a serving of ale makes him hesitate about actually breaking into song. He sets his lute down, and pulls a coin from his pocket for her. 

“Thank you.” He says politely.

Her expression doesn’t mellow as she grunts and sticks the coin somewhere in the folds of her dress. “Drink up and leave.” She advises him as she picks up a rag, and continues wiping at the counter. It must be to simply have something to do, as the old, worn wood is covered in a layer of grime so thick that no amount of wiping will ever make it clean. 

“What? Don’t care for that one? I’ve got plenty others. Perhaps a love ballad would be more to your tastes?” 

The woman doesn’t seem impressed. 

“Don’t care for Witchers. Don’t care for bards.” She says. She turns her back to him as she fills up more cups, and piles them on a tray. It’s obvious that the conversation, if one could call it that, is over. 

It’s not that Jaskier is unused to rudeness or inhospitality. Even before he started traveling with Geralt, he’s had to deal with his fair share of it. But for whatever reason, it feels different when he’s with Geralt. There’s a hypocrisy there; when there’s a wyvern terrorizing the town, he’s a hero, but when he just happens to be walking through, Geralt’s naught more than a menace. Even worse are the times when that gratitude only lasts until Geralt asks for his pay and suddenly it’s, ‘why are you turning an act of altruism into a mere transaction’, or more in character, ‘fuck you, no we can’t pay you’. Jaskier knows that Geralt is used to it, but the two-facedness grates on Jaskier just as badly as Valdo Marx’s plagiarism. 

Jaskier’s songs have helped somewhat, he thinks. Since he’d penned ‘Toss a Coin’, the general populace had at least been somewhat nicer, as Geralt been greeted with more ‘Witcher’ than ‘Freak’ lately. But apparently whatever goodwill his song has been spawning has not taken root here. 

Jaskier takes a sip of his drink, a foul, weak thing that shouldn’t be graced with being called ‘ale’, and then having already spent the coin on it, takes a larger gulp, set on finishing it, no matter how bad it tastes. 

The door swings open, casting evening light on the few early drinkers, drunks and bored bards, waiting for the chance to play. Jaskier squints as the door swings shut, and Geralt’s familiar silhouette shifts into color. He sets the bloodied bones of the wraith, and the dripping heads of the nekkers attracted to it’s carnage on the table, and holds out a gore covered palm for his pay.

“It’s dead,” Geralt says, rather unnecessarily. “I’ll take my pay, and a room and bath.”

“No room for you,” The barkeep pulls a sack of coin from her skirts, given to her by the town’s lord who had deemed the problem of wyverns and Witchers far below him, and sets it on the counter instead of in Geralt’s hand. “No bath either. There’s a river on the edge of town. Make camp there.” She advises. 

Jaskier puts his lute in its case and slings it over his shoulder, and chugs the rest of his ale. It sits odd and heavy in his stomach, though he supposes that’s due to the lack of food in it. As Geralt turns back towards the door, Jaskier makes to follow him. A hand wraps around his wrist, and as he turns, he realizes it belongs to the barkeep. 

“There’s room for you, if ye want it, bard.” She says under her breath, apparently unaware that Geralt can still hear her speak.

Ah. So the barkeep has compassion after all. 

Carefully, he extricates himself from her grasp, and presses a kiss to the back of her hand. “Thank you very much for the offer, miss, but I prefer to remain with familiar company in bad lodgings, than unfamiliar in the best of beds.” 

The woman snatches her hand back, but not unkindly, and looks upon him with something like pity, or maybe remorse as he turns, jogging to catch up with Geralt.

The sun is low in the sky, casting red across the dying brown grass and leaning buildings. Years of heavy rains has made the ground soft and muddy, and has worn even the sparse stone paths and buildings into smooth softness from the yearly floods. Jaskier can smell the water in the air, faintly tinged with brine and green with new spring growth. 

He can also smell the gore drying on Geralt’s clothes, and sinking into his skin. Jaskier wrinkles his nose as he follows the smell to the stables where Geralt is saddling Roach. 

“Thought you were staying here.”

“What’s the point? I’d have to wake early to join you tomorrow morning. It makes more sense to just stay together.” Jaskier rummages through his bag for the herbs he’d bought while Geralt was off killing monsters, and presents them to him. “Here. I bought these for you earlier today, since you’re running out of potions.”

Geralt reaches for them, and the scent grows even worse. Jaskier grimaces and steps back. “On second thought, I’ll hold onto them until you’ve had your bath. You smell so bad, touching them might make them wilt.”

“Always going on about my smell,” Geralt mutters, as he takes Roach’s lead, and steers her onto the main street. 

“There are other things to talk about. You could tell me about your battle with the wraith.” When Geralt doesn’t answer, he continues, “Or must I find the dead thing and ask it instead?” 

Geralt won’t give a good tale; he never tells more than the barest bones of it, but Jaskier doesn’t mind filling in the blanks, painting his scarce retelling into a tale to be remembered for years to come. The only problem is getting him to say enough to build a tale off of.

Geralt pets Roach as he digs a waterskin from his saddlebags. He snorts in lieu of answering, and takes a long swig of it, his adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. 

“Well, it goes the same every time, doesn’t it?” Jaskier continues, realizing that he’s been staring for a bit too long. His voice is a little distant, belying his distraction, but he clears his throat, and pushes on nonetheless. Geralt has been oblivious to lots of things; no reason to think that he’ll notice Jaskier’s blunders now. “The Witcher hears about a monster, draws his sword, slays it. All that really changes is the location and species, hmm?”

“Your songs are inaccurate.” Geralt grumbles.

“Inaccurate, sure.” Jaskier agrees. “But the point is to entertain, not inform. And how would I make my ballads accurate if you, sir witcher, are so stingy with the details?”

For a moment, Jaskier is unsure if his needling will work, but then Geralt pauses, closing his waterskin shut once more, his hand brushing against Roach’s flank in what might be petting if it lingers and Jaskier knows that he’ll get his answer. 

“I do not think it’ll make for a good song.”

“I’d still like to know.”

Geralt grunts, a noise to fill the silence as if to hide his hesitation, and then begins, “She was a princess, once. She was murdered and eviscerated for being born under a solar eclipse. All of the men who crossed her path were hung by their entrails. The women were pulled limb from limb.” The sun begins to fall behind the treeline, casting shadows on Geralt’s face. It makes his hair gleam like it’s made of glimmering rubies, and shimmering topaz. His expression, though harsh, is not cruel. It takes Jaskier a moment to recognize the unfamiliar expression as one of pain. “Does that make for a good tale, bard?”

There are plenty of dark things in the world. Jaskier has known this, has seen this, has experienced it himself, though thankfully not often. The tales of princesses and towers are ones long told, and despite happening not long ago, feel more like a fairy tale than reality. The tone of Geralt’s voice, the slight bitterness under his low grumble, and the discomfort of his expression makes him think that it’s personal.

“It does, actually,” Jaskier says. Up ahead, he can hear the faint rushing of the river, and the call of the water birds, echoing as the evening shifts to night. “The hero defeating the villain- that’s what makes a good tale. And believe it or not, Geralt of Rivia, but you are a hero. It lightens the heart to hear such stories.”

“I’m no hero.” Geralt leads them off the path and into the treeline. He ties Roach to a young birch, and begins to untie his things, setting his bed roll on the ground, along with a spare set of clothes, and a chunk of soap. 

Jaskier laughs, and shakes his head as he tosses his own stuff against a stump, and takes a seat on it. “Sure, Geralt. You- who gives most of your coin away, feeding orphans and saving damsels- are nothing like a hero. Go on and take your bath. I’ll make camp.”

Surprisingly, Geralt takes the dismissal without complaint. He drops his swords near Jaskier, and turns to the river. 

Jaskier doesn’t watch him walk away. He doesn’t allow his eyes to follow the pleasing rigidity of his silhouette, and certainly does not feel heat rising in his cheekbones like the dying embers of a hearth fire. Instead, he unfolds Geralt’s bedroll, and then his own on the opposite side of where he plans to make their fire. He gathers sticks and dead leaves for the fire, piles rocks around it, and makes it catch aflame with a flick of his fingers. 

Geralt is a good person, however loath he is to accept that fact. Geralt deserves better than the hostility with which the world seems to treat him for no better reason than he is strange, and strange things scare most people. Jaskier wants to change this, but he has the feeling that words, no matter how powerful, might not be enough. 

How annoying it is that no one else can see what Jaskier does. A hero in a wolf’s clothing, a knight, if e’er there was one. 

Hmm, he thinks approvingly. That could be a lyric with a little twisting. He repeats it aloud adding a lilting tune to it. 

“Another song, perhaps,” He muses aloud as he settles next to the fire. The stars are peaking from the heavens now as the last of the blue day sky bleeds into the dark of the night. It’s a pretty sight, he’ll admit, though it would be prettier still with a drink of ale in his hand. Even the shitty drink he’d had earlier could suffice. “ _ A hero in wolfskin, t’was a knight, if e’er there was one. Though he saved maidens, he was recognized by none. _ ”

“Fancy words for a Witcher’s bard. Think tha’s why he likes him?” A man says, his voice low and menacing. He chuckles as Jaskier starts to turn his head towards the sound. “Uh, uh, uh.” The man taunts, pressing a knife to his neck. “‘Aven’t you ever heard that curiosity kills tha cat?”

“I have, yes. But I’ll admit I’m still more than a bit curious as to why you, uh, gentlemen,” Another two men steps in front of Jaskier, blocking his line of sight to the fire, and beyond it, where Geralt should reappear from. “Have decided to uh, join me at my camp tonight?”

“Big mouth on you. Lot’s of fine words. Think tha’s why he lets him tail after him like a trained dog? But you’ve got no bite, just a lousy bark.” He digs his finger into Jaskier’s hair, and yanks his head back, pressing his knife against the skin of his throat. Jaskier catches a glimpse of red hair, and freckled cheeks. “Why don’t you bark for us, tell us where the Witcher went, an’ we’ll let you live to sign another day.”

Jaskier’s eyes dart to the swords half hidden in the underbrush not five feet away. Even if he could reach them, it’s not like he’s got the experience to use them, not against- he does a quick count, unsure if the shadows in the edge of his vision are trees or more men- five men. 

Another man, this one the shortest of the group, though the burliest by far, kneels in front of Jaskier and raps his knuckles against his forehead. “Anythin’ in there?” He laughs as Jaskier winces. 

“I, uh, it’s just me here. He went on without me. Witcher endurance and all.”

“An’ thas why you’ve got two bedrolls out? An’ his horse.”

Jaskier had really hoped that he wouldn’t notice. 

“I, uh, set that out for a lady friend.”

The hand on his hair tightens and the blade on his throat kisses it, hot and sharp, undoubtedly drawing blood. He resists the urge to swallow. 

“Lies.” The shortest man scratches at his beard, smearing grime on his sun darkened cheek. His hair is a dark brown mop, long and tangled, unlike Geralt’s fine, light hair, and it falls into his dark eyes as he leans forward, grinning cruelly. “What’ll it take to make you sing, little bard?”

“If you want a song, I’ve got plenty. ‘Toss a coin’ has been rather popular this season, but I’ve-” 

The man behind him snickers as he jerks Jaskier back again, this time knocking him onto his back. The knife leaves his throat as he falls, and he takes the chance to roll over, reaching for the swords lying in the bushes, but where his fingers should graze them, he finds nothing. He looks up into the darkness behind them, and sees golden eyes peering at him from the depths. Thank the gods. 

The man with the dirty hair grabs his ankle, dragging him back towards the fire. Before he can pull himself into a sitting position, one of them wrenches Jaskier’s hands above his head, another pinning his leg to the ground. He kicks blindly with his free foot, making contact, once, twice with a heavyset man’s crotch. “Fuck,” the redhead growls, clamping his hand down upon Jaskier’s ankle hard enough to bruise. “You’ll pay for that, bard. We’ll put that pretty mouth of yours to work.”

It takes a moment for the words to sink in, and for the first time in a long time, Jaskier feels a very particular kind of fear that inks into his bones like lead. “Off, you-” He knows he’s not supposed to give Geralt away, but he can’t do this- he can’t sit here and wait for it to happen either. “Geralt! Geralt, come here, please!”

They pause, listening for movement beyond their tussle, but either Geralt isn’t there, or he’s fallen still, because he can hear nothing beyond the crackling of the fire, and the few night birds singing in the stillness. 

“Seems you were right. Your man ain’t comin’.” The man who’d held the knife sticks it inside of his shirt, ripping it down the middle from the inside, and then reaches for his pants, sticking the knife dangerously close to his manhood. “Aye,” He says, his breath hot as he leans over him. “Better hold still lest my knife work get… sloppy.” 

And that, if anything, makes him pause, tensing and panting, though it feels like no air is reaching his lungs. He’s faced death before, and by the gods, does he not want to face it again anytime soon. He stays still as the man draws the knife against the seam until it’s split down the middle, and sliding down each leg, leaving his ass as bare as the day he was born.

One of the men is already hard, he can feel it against his thigh as the man rubs against him, and pulls it out of his pants as he maneuvers himself in front of Jaskier. His eyes are bright blue, maybe a shade or two darker than his own, but much harder, as if he’s enjoying Jaskier’s fear, which must be almost palpable in the air. 

“Geralt!”

“Ger-” The man in front of him laughs as the man with the knife sticks two fingers in Jaskier’s mouth, and causing him to cough around it, Geralt’s name dying in his panic. 

“Think I’m growing tired of your music,” The man grins, and then suddenly looks up, as the man leaning over him, about to rape him, sputters and chokes, blood leaking from his mouth as s sword presses through his chest. The man who’d threatened him before spins the knife, holding it to Jaskier’s throat again. The others holding him down lessen their grip as they start to rise, but pause as he hisses, “Stay where you are.”

Geralt pushes the man off of his sword, and before the other one holding his leg can react, presses it to his throat. He makes to kill him, but before he can draw it, the man at Jaskier’s throat tightens his hold, making Jaskier gasp with the shock of the pain. 

“Not so fast, Witcher. I’ll gut your bard before you can gut me.”

Geralt pauses, a snarl curling his lips into something dangerous and feral. The man in his grip looks like a deer caught in a hunter’s sight. “You’ve got quarrel with me, not him. Let. Him. Go.”

“Aye, but I do. This man- this,  _ dog _ ,” He spits. “Follows you around, singin’ yer praises, and givin’ people the wrong idea of what a Witcher is. You’re no hero- You’re a monster, like the lot of them. Kiled my brother you did, killed half the men from our village, and ‘ere you are, paradin’ around like a hero back from war.”

Geralt’s hand tightens around the hilt. A wind blows, making Jaskier shiver. 

“Ah, ah,” The man taunts, drawing a thin line against his skin. Jaskier freezes, hoping that he’s skilled enough to not hit the artery. He’s not smart enough to realize that the only reason why Geralt hasn’t killed them all yet is because Jaskier’s still alive, and that hurting him more than he already has will not do well for him. “If you hurt my man there, I’ll kill yours. An’ now I’ve only got a mind to hurt ‘im a little.”

Jaskier’s eyes flicker to Geralt, wondering what exactly he might be able to do to help with a blade to his neck and three men holding him down. “You want coin?” Geralt gestures at Roach, tethered off somewhere in the darkness. “You can have it.”

The man grins. “Oh, we’ll take it, but not until we’re done here.”

The man Geralt’s holding doesn’t look comfortable with the idea. “Ay, Markus, let’s just take the coin an’ go. Tha’s what we came here for.”

“No,” Markus barks. Keeping the knife pressed to Jaskier’s throat, he moves in front of him, sitting on his chest. He wrestles his dick from his pants, and shoves it at Jaskier’s mouth. He shuts his mouth as tight as he can, but a swift hit at his temple with the hilt of the dagger coupled with his weight stuns him into complicity. He tastes it before he feels it, salty and musky, and not entirely unfamiliar. As he shoves in with a groan, Geralt growls. “ _ I  _ say when we leave.  _ Me _ , not a witcher an’ certainly not you, John.”

Markus’s grip loosens as he moves the knife to press against Jaskier’s shoulder, and gains a haltering rhythm. Jaskier gathers himself, and with more hatred than he thinks he’s ever felt before, bites down. The man screams, his knife stabbing through Jaskier’s shoulder , Jaskier’s teeth clenching down even harder until all he can taste is blood. The man slashes blindly as the weight holding his arms down comes free. Jaskier pushes at him, mouth still clenched as he fends against the blows. 

The weight lifts, Jaskier unclenches his teeth, and the man falls to the ground. Geralt places a foot on the man’s back, as he pulls it free. Jaskier pants, drawing himself to his elbows, and then wincing, to a sitting position. He grabs at the rags of his pants, attempting to draw them closed, but his hands shake when he tries to pull himself into a sitting position. Geralt hacks at the man’s neck, slicing it with a single blow. Heaving, breathing heavily, he drops the bloody sword, the silver one, Jaskier notices, as he stalks over to him. 

“Are you-” Geralt pauses, unbuttoning his shirt, and draping it on Jaskier. It’s large enough to cover him to his crotch, and for that, he is grateful. “You’re wounded.” 

“Well, yes,” Jaskier says, his voice thin and rasping. Geralt lifts his chin to survey the mess of his neck, his mouth tilting down in displeasure. A smattering of blood freckles the left side of his face, and Jaskier wishes to reach forward and wipe it away. Geralt hands him a waterskin for him to gargle with, which he takes gratefully. “Of course I am.” 

Geralt stands abruptly, calling Roach over with a click of the tongue. He pulls out a bottle of something from his bag, and draws Jaskier close to his chest as he takes a seat behind him. “Not fatal, I think. But it could be infected or poisoned. I’ll find a healer in the morning. This will help with the pain.” And as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, he downs the potion, his eyes going black, and leans down, kissing Jaskier on the mouth. His tongue pushes against his lips, gentle but insistent, and Jaksier can’t help but moan as he parts them. Geralt tastes like something faintly sweet, like honey lingering on the tongue, and though he is forceful, it is not uncareful or unpleasant. 

When Geralt pulls back, it feels like he’s been eating poppyseed all night. “Wha- What was that?” Already, his words are slurring.

“Saliva has painkilling properties. Regular humans don’t make enough to feel the affect. Witchers are more potent.” He drags Jaskier’s bed roll over, away from the puddles of blood and gore, and helps wrestle him into it. “Sleep.”

“But I-”

“Talk tomorrow. Sleep.”

And as if the words were set in stone, he does. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your support guys~ I really thought I'd lose a bit of readership last chapter because of my reluctance to use tags. Thank you very much for commenting!

Jaskier wakes in a way that is oh so familiar. With a hazy head, and body aching, but it’s obviously not the kind of ache that one likes to wake up to. There is no moment where the night before is forgotten, nor the horrors of it hard to decipher. Instead, there is clarity, and hot broiling anger, and- where’s Geralt, did he-

“I fixed your pants.” Geralt says, holding the clothes out awkwardly, the needle and thread still hanging between his clenched teeth as if he’d just finished. 

“I-” The taste of whatever Geralt had dosed him with (it couldn’t just be spit, right? Jaskier can’t disprove it, but is that really it?), and the lingering copper of blood still lingers on his tongue. His throat stings as he aggravates the cuts there, but Jaskier ignores it as he tries again. “Thank you. You didn’t have to do that. I have other clothes.”

Geralt stands there, obviously smelling the blood still crusted on Jaskier’s skin, his eyes lingering on what will undoubtedly become new scars, given enough time.

At the same time that Geralt says, “I’m sorry about last last night,” Jaskier mumbles, “Just give me two damn minutes and I’ll be fine.” 

Geralt hears him just fine. He waits for Jaskier to take the mended trousers, and then hesitating, points at his shoulder. “I didn’t want to bandage it while you were asleep.”

“Unconscious and asleep are two very different things.” Jaskier says pointedly. He knows better than to hope that Geralt will explain, why then, he’d decided to kiss him last night, knocking him out and drugging him before treating the stab wound in his shoulder. It worked, at least. It only aches in the sort of way that a pulled muscle would, though Jaskier knows that it won’t last.

“I have bandages, and needle and thread.” The question is unspoken: do you need help?

It’s odd, is what it is. Geralt has never treated him like this before. Nice, in that visible sort of way that normal people usually do. It makes Jaskier feel uncomfortable. Does this friendship have only two settings? Hurt or uneasy?

“Two minutes,” Jaskier says again, dragging himself to his feet. He’s still wearing Geralt’s shirt, which carries a faint stain on the side from his last stab wound, and now vibrant red from the newest. Jaskier plucks a new doublet from his saddlebags, exchanges the repaired pants for a new pair, and heads to the river. Even with his weak human ears, he can hear it gushing faintly. 

If it’s loud enough for him to find his way there by sound, it should be loud enough to cover any sounds he might make. 

The riverbank is crowded with trees lining the bank, likely why the men hadn’t noticed Geralt on their way to camp. Their bodies, he realizes. Jaskier hadn’t seen them. Must’ve been why Geralt looked so bedraggled this morning; must’ve spent a long time burying them, or burning them, and then trying to fix the pants he’ll never be able to wear again anyways. 

Jaskier lies his clothes on a branch hanging over the bank, and wades into the chilled morning water. It’s cool but the kind of cool that one gets used to, and doesn’t despise unless a particularly harsh wind brushes over the newly wet skin, which Jaskier is more or less protected from by the trees lining the bank. At first, he gets the idea to scrub harshly, to scour their touch from his skin, but this is not the first time that this has happened. 

Unless one remained behind the protection of a village where everyone knew you, and your family, or had guards to ensure your safety, it was almost guaranteed that things were going to happen. It was why female bards tended to travel in groups, where there was safety in numbers, and also why they tended to marry, leave the profession young, or otherwise, acquaint themselves with a specific place, where there was sure to be punishment for anyone too intimate. There was supposedly safety in simply being a man, but the further one got from the cities, the less that meant. 

Jaskier has never been a fighter. 

He’s had the sword fighting lessons, and can wield a dagger; perhaps even take down a man or two if he has the element of surprise, but he’s not skilled at it. His ease at pulling the dagger from it’s sheathe in his boot is one learned from experience; of being pinned to a wall, and scrambling for breather; of having his mouth pried open or his pants shoved down, or any number of things in the rush for his attacker to get what they want. 

This is nothing new, and where once, he may have panicked, scrubbing at phantom fingers, and crying under the cry of the river, now he just feels numb. 

Jaskier washes the blood from where it smears, reddish-brown across his skin, The silvery scar from the stab wound flexes as he bends down to duck his head beneath the surface. 

No, this was no shock, and quite honestly, he’s had worse. What does sting like a new wound is that Geralt was there to witness it all. How feeble he must look, to be hurt and injured all the time, always crying for Geralt to rescue him! It’s not like he hasn’t been hurt before, and he's gotten out of those scrapes, alone, just fine.

Jaskier gets the feeling that he’s been in the water too long. 

Moving far too sharply for the amount of bruises and cuts he wears, he sits up, heaving for breath. He must’ve been thinking so hard that he didn’t realize.

He tramples towards his clothes, drying off with Geralt’s shirt, and dressing quickly, and then- and now, Jaskier realizes, holding himself steady with the help of a thin pine tree, he must face Geralt once more. He could’ve prolonged it if he’d thought to bring bandages, but it’s only just a few scratches, and a stab wound he can’t feel yet. 

The walk back to camp is longer than he’d remembered. The trees are too close together and tangled for a straight path. Jaskier instead meanders back, and ends up on the north end of their little campsite. Geralt is still there, not in the spot he’d been left in, but cleaning up camp. The bedrolls are tied up, and the fire scattered. Jerky wrapped in broad leaves sit on Jaskier’s saddle, along with a flask of what is probably not water. 

Better this than coddling, he thinks, as he head towards it.

There’s blood on the ground, dark brown and splotchy, where the bodies were. The bodies are gone, and Jaskier still can’t tell where they’ve gone. 

“I’ll get laundry done when we get to town.” Jaskier says, offhandedly. He can set his mouth on autopilot sometimes, and that’s what he does now, chattering a stream of consciousness as he takes hold of the two and swings over the saddle. “If I can find some decent lye, and citrus I can make some that’ll keep the smell of horse off our clothes for longer. Could do you some good given how much monster guts tend to linger even after washing.”

Jaskier steers his horse towards the road, rides slow despite wanting to be gone yesterday.

“Or maybe lavender? I’ve always been impartial to lavender. It’s light, but a right whiff of it, and a woman will be able to guess it right off.”

“I don’t care about soap.”

“Oh, well that’s quite obvious. Lye and ash,” Jaskier shakes his head. “You’ve got to add herbs and whatnot to it, or else the smell’ll be too sharp. That’s why you hate the stuff innkeepers sell so much.”

“I don’t want to talk with you about soap.” Geralt says again, insistent.

Jaskier can feel his next words curling up in the base of his spine like some backwards reflection of an orgasm, hideous and anticipatory. 

“Are you…” He pauses, as if trying to pick a word. Finally, he settles on “... well?”

“I don’t want to talk about last night.” Jaskier says, enunciating each world with careful precision. Each syllable presses flat and blunt against the roof of his mouth. He takes a long swig of the not water- vodka, he realizes.

Geralt is silent, stewing. Finally, they break onto the road once more, and he says, with obvious thought behind the words, “You get hurt when you’re with me. You’ve been hurt, several times. This should be enough to show you that being around Witchers- around me, is not safe.”

“Goddammit, Geralt!” Jaskier makes a sound much like a squawk. “ _Life_ isn’t safe! I could trip and fall, or get mugged wrong, or have a heart attack! Hell, even a determined goose could hurt me! You’re _not_ special.”

“Would you been killed without me? Would this,” Geralt gestures at Jaskier vaguely, as if the mark of those men is still visible on his skin. “Have happened?”

“With you here, or not, it could’ve easily happened.” And then more quietly, “It’s happened before.”

Geralt pauses, like the kind of statue set out to scare crows or small children. “It’s happened before?”

“You must know of the nature of the world? Surely, the ‘butcher of blaviken’ must understand that much. The world is a harsh, evil, place, Geralt. And most of us aren’t strong enough to hold out against the worst of it.” Like the air had all rushed out of him, his song gone, Jaskier slumps in the saddle. “It’s life.”

A harsh wind runs over him, chilling his still wet hair. 

And Geralt, for whatever it’s worth, says, “Come to Kaer Morhen with me.”

Jaskier fumbles with the flask, catching it between two fingers before it passes by his knee.

“What?” 

Because surely, _surely_ , he’s hearing it wrong. Normal people don’t go to Kaer Morhen. In all of the history books, and fantastical fiction stories he’d read on the subject, none had ever written on what it was like there, except for vague mentions of being in the mountains, and utterly inhospitable. And there would be other witchers there, of course, and while Jaskier would love to meet them, he’s unsure if they would hold the same enthusiasm for his appearance. 

“Come winter at Kaer Morhen with me.” Geralt says again, slipping down from Roach. It’s kind of absurd, the conversation they’d just had while on horseback. It mirrors their last hard one, and with that in mind, Jaskier disembarks too. “You can learn the way of the sword. I’m sure you can. And then it won’t ever have to happen to you again.”

Somehow Jaskier doubts that, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he thinks. He thinks hard.

Normally, he would go back to Novigrad, or Oxenfurt, warmed by a fire, and catching up on his reading and various new studies. He’s too young to be a guest lecturer, but he could potentially help out as a teacher’s assistant as he added to his considerable knowledge. Jaskier had half a mind to write a book of poems or some such on Geralt, as even just a summer with him had revealed more than enough to fill ten volumes, if given the time and a proper wordsmith. 

And that time, Jaskier had reckoned, could be put to good use in deciphering the meaning of the summer itself; the mark on his hand, the taste of death that still sometimes lingers on his tongue, and worst of all, the burgeoning feelings of- won’t, can’t say it- taking root in his heart. But this? This opportunity was one he simply couldn’t imagine turning down, except-

He has to.

Jaskier shakes his head. “You’re right about a lot of things, Geralt, but not this.” As if his hand were not his own, he watches it rise, as clasp Geralt’s. Blood is thick beneath his fingernails, and in the creases of his fingers. “I’ll meet you in the spring. I promise I’ll be right there at the same place we met as soon as the snow melts enough to travel. And when we meet again, I’ll be better. Not a burden, or a damsel, but a friend to you. That’s all I want to be.”

Geralt understands. Or maybe he doesn’t, given the dull ache that forms in Jaskier’s chest following his admission. But for better or worse, they travel on for the rest of the day, reaching Novigrad’s outer gates near noon, and once they hit Novigrad proper, they go their separate ways. Jaskier lingers at the crossroads, moving slowly through the slums, as Geralt leaves at the same deliberate pace in the opposite direction. Jaskier might’ve been worried that Geralt would not return, if not for the physical pain that grew with every step they took away from each other. Even as Jaskier looks back, sneaking glances at his receding back, he can see his shoulders hunch and curl into themselves, as if sheltering himself from a rainy onslaught.

Jaskier counts down from twenty, and when the tight feeling feels like a knife twisting in his chest rather than a feeling of shame, he turns his horse, and spurs her on to catch up with him.

“Geralt!” He calls, somehow out of breath. Jaskier is rarely out of breath. With the lungs of a singer, he can hold his breath for two minutes, run a mile without heaving, and yet- “I’ll come. I’ll come.” The words spill out like the song of a bird, and it’s odd, it’s like bloodletting and watching his humors clear. 

Geralt is quiet, and for a moment, Jaskier wonders if perhaps he too will change his mind. “Good.” He says, and continues on. 

Good, Jaskier thinks, and follows.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lied about the chapter count. This is going to take much longer than I initially intended. 
> 
> Secondly, there's like 200 of you subscribed to this. Please comment guys! The validation is literally the only reason I write and share these stories!

The smell of fresh mountain air is bitter and sharp, and nothing at all like the stories say. Of course, most of those stories are about Skellige, not the Blue Mountains, and include interludes about the smell of seaspray, and views of the ocean from cascading cliffs. These mountains are winding, with thin, decrepit paths leading through thick forests, and cool valleys, slowly winding around the side of the various slopes in a lazy manner. It’s easy to get lost, with the many dead end paths, and secret passages that only locals or an experienced guide could hope to traverse, and there is little there that reminds Jaskier of those romantic tellings and poems. No, these mountains are hostile in a way that he has only ever seen in Velen’s swamps, which makes sense, he supposes. 

The trek to Kaer Morhen is meant to be a daunting one, to prevent intruders, Jaskier understands, intruders such as himself, who are unsuited for such an arduous climb. Hell, they’re not even past the base of the mountain, and already he feels a tinge of regret for agreeing to come. But then Jaskier looks over at Geralt’s expression, stern but still holding the remnants of a smile in the creases of his forehead and corners of his mouth, and he remembers. 

He remembers the ache when he tried to walk away, and the way it feels to wake up in Geralt’s arms on a cool morning, and suddenly it doesn’t seem that bad. 

Still, Jaskier doubts his good mood will last long once the real journey begins. For now, there are supplies to gather. Food, winter boots and clothes, herbs for whatever potions Geralt wishes to brew while up there; paper, ink and spare strings for Jaskier’s lute. If they’d gone through Novigrad instead of around it, they might’ve had all of them by now, but neither had wanted to.

Jaskier was afraid that passing through his old hunting grounds would make him want to part once more, and Geralt doesn’t like cities, at least not now, with the Eternal Flame’s renewed pograms against nonhumans taking hold in Novigrad, among other places. Even if Geralt isn’t at risk, they both know he won’t just sit still if someone else is unfairly prosecuted, even with all of his posturing about remaining neutral, and to be quite honest, another conflict is the last thing either of them needs, considering how Jaskier is still healing from the last one.

So through the woods they went. And so here they are. 

There are a few villages dotted sparsely between them and the Blue Mountains, and the first of which is less than a day away. Jaskier’s horse has made the trek so far much easier than it might otherwise have been on foot, but still. He looks forward to the village ahead and the promise of a bed and bath- hopefully without any insults thrown Geralt’s way, or other problems to accompany it.

They still haven’t talked about the kiss. 

Jaskier looks down at the back of his hand, where a wolf, not exactly like Geralt’s medallion, but not unlike it either, is scarred upon his skin. They haven’t talked about this either. 

Perhaps that’s for the best.

For the kiss happened in the aftermath of something horrendous, and it’s an odd feeling to reconcile something he’d daydreamed about with the bruises the day after. And the mark- that’s something he has no idea how to deal with. Though Geralt obviously cares- cares enough to fight for his life, not once, but on two separate occasions- he’s not going to admit it. So where does that leave the two of them?

Heading into the mountains apparently, to spend an entire winter in an otherwise dilapidated and isolated keep with a collection of other witchers who aren’t expecting a talkative, troublemaking bard to join them.

“Are you really, uh, allowed to bring guests?” Jaskier asks for about the hundredth time since they’d set off. 

“Having second thoughts?”

“No, no, I just-” Jaskier pauses, unsure of what exactly he means to say. It’s not that he doesn’t want to go. He’d wanted space, sure, but he doesn’t _ not _ want to be with Geralt either. “I don’t want to intrude.” When Geralt doesn’t respond right off, Jaskier leans forward, arms against the neck of his horse, and says quietly, “I  _ am  _ intruding, aren’t I?”

“I’ve sent-”

“Friends?” Jaskier interjects, knowing that Geralt will say anything but that. Really, the verbal acrobatics he does in order to avoid saying the word are quite a feat. “Or were they lady-friends?” 

“I’ve sent others there for winter before.” Geralt finishes. The speed they’re traveling at is leisurely. With the first snow at least a month off, and the chill of fall just barely tinging the air, there’s no need to hurry. The towns on this route, between Geralt’s usual hunting grounds and his destination, are used to the yearly purge of monsters and monstrous things, and fear witchers less than others do, though that’s not saying much. 

The trees are tall and fading from bright greens to oranges, and thick golden hues. The breeze, harsher and more brusque than it had than it had been when they’d first begun traveling together, weaves within the branches, filling the afternoon with the subtle sound of leaves rattling. They line the narrow road, casting long shadows across the dirt.

Jaskier could ask about this person, this friend. But why? For what purpose? He’ll not learn a damn thing that will actually make him feel any better. Instead, he strums idly on his lute, wincing as the movement pulls on his shoulder wound, still stiff and occasionally aching despite having healed to a puckered pink line. He has the feeling that it’s going to hurt for a long time. 

“Tell me about them.”

Geralt glances at Jaskier, his gaze lingering at the hand grasping the neck of his lute, then shifting to the tenseness in his shoulders, and down to his other hand, resting on the strings. The hand with the mark, with the wolf. It’s hardly visible, to be honest, in the way that old wounds often are, but Jaskier can see the bird on Geralt’s hand, so he’s sure that it’s what holds his gaze. He’s been looking at it often, like one might look at a sword hanging from an angry man’s belt. 

“Geralt?”

“Are you going to write about it?” He says, finally.

“No,” Jaskier says honestly. If he’s to write about them, he’d like to write stories told from their own mouths rather than from Geralt, who undoubtedly will leave details out. “I’d like to know a bit about them before you bring me there, is all.”

And he would like to  _ not _ talk, and  _ not _ think about things, and not get wrapped up in the same conversations he keeps having with himself.

Geralt considers.

“There will likely be four of us,” His back is straight, but not like a rod; more like a tree, comfortable and pliant. His hair is pulled away from his face, giving Jaskier an easy opportunity to study his expression. “Unless someone else is brought there.” 

Before they’d settled in for the night, Jaskier had helped him detangle his hair, picking burrs and twigs accumulated in the days between baths, and braided it back, away from his face. It makes his glare less intimidating. The slant of his mouth less severe. 

Or perhaps, it’s fondness. The likes of which Jaskier has never caught directed towards himself.

“But it’s unlikely?”

“Very. Lambert does not make many friends, and Eskel…. Is hesitant to make more.”

Jaskier is quiet, but makes a gesture for him to continue on. 

“Lambert and Eskel…” Geralt chuckles. “I guess we’re something like brothers. Eskel and I grew up together. Lambert was one of the last trained at the School of the Wolf. There might be others out there, walking the path, but it’s only us three who have come back for winter these past few years.”

“Lambert,” Jaskier says, trying the syllables as if tasting a new wine. “What’s he like?”

“He’s a dick.” 

“And Eskel?”

“Less of a dick.”

“What great descriptions you give, Geralt.” Jaskier says dryly. “But you said four. You, Eskel, Lambert-” He lifts a finger at each name. “That’s only three.”

“Vesemir,” Geralt says, his voice distant. There are years and miles between where he is physically, and where his mind is, and it pulls the core of him thin and taut. “He’s… he’s the closest thing any of us have to a father. But not exactly.”

“What was it like,” Jaskier says, sitting up and spurring his horse into keeping pace with Roach. “Growing up there?”

“We knew from the start that many of us would die,” Geralt says. “But many would have died nonetheless, as child beggars on city streets, or worse. Kaer Morhen was… “

Jaskier hurries to say,“You don’t have to tell me.”

“I don’t.” Geralt agrees, pausing as they reach a crossroads. His eyes flit up to the overhang of rock a few yards off, a perfect place for an ambush, and then, finding it clear of enemies, continues on. The other path leads off into darkened trees, and thick vines that would trip up even the most nimble footed of man. “The words do not come easy for me. There are rooms that even now, we do not enter. Where the scent of the dead and dying are just as fresh as on a battlefield, the sour scent of chemicals, and fever called sweat burned into leather thicker than the undergrowth beyond the walls. But there were good days too. We never starved, never wanted for warm clothes or company.”

Jaskier stays quiet, hoping not to startle him from his sudden talkativity. Overhead, the sun winks above the mountain’s peak, covering them in cool shadow. 

“Lambert hates the path that was chosen for him. I think Eskel has made his peace with it. And I-” Geralt peers up at the sun, hidden behind a thick veneer of cloud cover. His pupils are wide and round, like a cat laying on a warm windowsill. Contentment, likely, more so than happiness. “I am who I am. There’s no use fighting what’s done.”

“Geralt-”

“You talk too much,” Geralt says, but not unkindly. It’s a fact, just as it’s a fact that Geralt has white hair. “Why don’t you want to talk about the-”

“You kissed me, Geralt. Why don’t you talk about that?”

Somewhere on the cliffside, birds are nesting. Their songs mix with the wind in a symphony that is familiar and yet not. Neither of them say anything. Jaskier shifts in his saddle. Geralt takes a swig from his second waterskin, the one filled with not-water. He hands it to Jaskier, and neither of them talk about the requested subject.

That night, the air is especially cool, and while Jaskier had intended to create space, both figuratively and literally, the chill convinces him to do as they’ve done since the night air first began to cool, and he falls asleep with his back pressed to Geralt’s chest.

It only takes an hour of traveling to reach Lettermill, named so due to being the only village in the area with a mail service route, and a mill. It’s not as poor as some of the others they’ve traveled through, but it’s location has left the market sparsely populated. They split the shopping list between them, and after a quick performance in the town square, Jaskier does his share. Along with a ugly pair of warm boots, and a coat that Geralt approves of, he buys a large collection of bottles of some fancy looking wine. The bottles are old, and to be quite honest, he’s depending on a drink to lessen any awkwardness that might stem from his arrival. 

“Might ye deal with the harpies takin’ nest atop the old garrison?” The alderman asks, his voice trembling. He leans heavily on his cane, which is made of thick, white bone. 

Geralt turns from the herbalist’s wares, which consist of perhaps half the ingredients usually carried in his arsenal, and nods. “Same as always, Markus?”

“Aye, but we did as ye said, and ‘ave worn green hats and wormwood since first sightin’. No youngun’s taken, an’ no hunters killed.”

“Good,” Geralt says, taking the brown satchel he’d bought and tucking it under his arm. 

The days pass with quiet monotony. Slow riding, useless conversation, held tense by the promise of what they’ve yet to discuss, or cutting down stupid monsters terrorizing the villages they pass through. Just like that, three weeks pass by.  It’s not a problem, of course, until the first snowstorm blows in, much too early for the season, leaving them stranded in an inn a week’s journey from their final destination. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thirdly, I gave the boys a break. Be happy! Because, uh, another Witcher enters the picture next chapter, and things will change....


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter?? So soon?
> 
> Y'all gave me so many comments, I couldn't resist... Fair warning, I wrote most of this after work, so I was drunk with tiredness and therefore, there's likely at least a few mistakes here and there. Anywho, thank you for reading and commenting! It's makes it all worth it to know that y'all like it!

Two witchers and a bard walk into a bar; it seems more like the opening to a cliched joke than reality, and yet, as Geralt shoulders into the inn, a dusting of snow already collecting atop his pale hair, and leather clad shoulders, Jaskier finds it to be the truth. Or at least, close enough to it to count. For in the corner booth, a man with two swords sits, curled over a mug and a bowl of soup like a dog guarding his scraps; he looks up as Jaskier kicks off his boots and sodden socks with noisy abandon, using Geralt’s shoulder to keep his balance.

“Bit early to see your ugly mug around these parts,” the man says, raising his tankard in a half hearted toast. “What’s set a fire under your ass?”

The fire is low in the corner, likely because the firewood stacked by the hearth is low as well, belying just how unexpected the shift in weather was. It makes the chill that creeps from underneath the door and through the cracks of the windowsills linger in odd spots as they walk past. The scent of dinner is faint, though it’s not long past the usual time to sup; stewed greens, and weak broth. It’s not surprising. There’s an air of poverty about the place, though no one seems to mind it. The walls of many homes are made of wood, but sealed with mud instead of plaster or stone, and the inn has the air of an abandoned place more so than one of a liminal safe haven.

A smile pulls at the corners of Geralt’s mouth, and he moves without warning, making Jaskier lose his balance. He catches himself on a nearby table, and scooping up his discarded things with one hand, follows after him.

“Should ask the same of you. Did they chase you out of Redania again? Last I was there, they had your face on all the wanted signs.”

“Wanted?” The witcher shifts, tensing in the way that promises power and movement clenched in the muscle beneath his leather tunic. It takes a moment for Jaskier to ignore it, and understand his tone as playful scoffing. “That’s just their way of saying they like  _ me _ more than  _ you _ . Keep off my Path an’ all.”

The other witcher grins and slings an arm over Geralt’s shoulder. He has a rounded widow’s peak, and dark hair- a surprise somewhat. He’d thought that the white hair was a witcher thing, but it seems that it’s really just a Geralt thing. His head comes an inch or so shorter than Geralt’s, which is to say, he’s about Jaskier’s height, and the smarmy, self assured grin he wears is utterly familiar, and yet odd, resting below those golden cat’s eyes. A scar runs over his right eye, mirroring the scar over Geralt’s left. 

Jaskier pauses a few feet behind them, his bag slung over his shoulder awkwardly as he shifts from foot to foot waiting for an introduction. 

“Sure.” Geralt drawls sarcastically, and then, stepping back, glances over at Jaskier, as if just remembering that he’s there. 

Jaskier feels weird, standing here with his lute over one shoulder, satchel over the other. His brand feels annoyedly visible, and he feels the urge to cover it with his other hand as the witcher looks his way.

“This your bard? The one singing all of the inaccurate praises?” His head is cocked, eyes focused like a bird hunting its prey. “Your song’s annoying, but can’t blame you for it. Geralt’s not much for words. Never ‘as been. But really, Geralt, what’s the use of havin’ a bard hanging around all winter?”

“It’s Jaskier, not ‘bard’,” He says, sliding into a chair. Jaskier leaves the one with a better view of the door to Geralt; a preference he’s noticed over their time together. “And I’d wager that you’re Lambert, right?”

Lambert furrows his brows, the cockiness sliding off somewhat as he takes his seat again. “How’d the hell you know that?”

“Geralt described you well enough to guess. Said one of you was an asshole, and the other less so.”

“And I’m the asshole.” Lambert chuckles. Without any heat to his voice, he says, “Made my soup get cold, you arse.”

“You’ll live,” Geralt snorts, and walks over to the bar, apparently satisfied with their conduct. It’s a test Jaskier hadn’t been aware he was taking, but as soon as he’s gone, it’s like a weight has been taken off of his chest. 

Lambert spears a chunk of meat, much too soggy for Jaskier to guess which type, and rips at it with his teeth. “So,” His voice is muffled by the food, and his eyes seem to glow against his sun kissed skin. “You fucking Geralt yet, or what?”

“I’m not-”

“What, like he’d bring someone who wasn’t gettin’ ploughed on the regular up ‘ere? Not his usual type,” Lambert’s eyes flick up and down his profile brazenly as he leans back in his seat. The wood creaks beneath him. “But I can guess the appeal.”

“We’re friends,” Jaskier says firmly. Though Geralt has never admitted it outright, he feels that it’s true enough to defend, even to Lambert. “Nothing more. I suppose it’d be easy to misunderstand if you’ve never had many friends of your own.”

Lambert snorts, and then gestures at the neck of the bottle sticking out from Jaskier’s bag. “You intend on sharing that,  _ friend _ ?”

Jaskier pulls it free, unscrews the bottle, takes a swig. He can’t feel the tips of his fingers just yet, but that’s a feeling he’s grown used to. Besides, the drink will warm him soon enough.

Geralt sets two bowls of soup down on the table, and a chunk of bread that’s burnt on one side near Lambert. Jaskier trades the bottle for a bowl. Lambert snatches up the bottle, and bread before Geralt even sits down.

“Are you playing nice?” Geralt asks, mostly to Lambert.

Jaskier takes a spoonful. Something green floats in it. “Quite.” He replies, blase.

Lambert takes a swig of the wine, frowns and drinks half the bottle before Geralt takes it, squinting at the bottle’s label though it’s far too dim for Jaskier to read. 

“What is this, anyway?”

“Wine. Better than the shite they serve here.” Lambert says, making a half hearted attempt to steal it back. “So shut up, and give it back.”

“Last I checked,” Jaskier says, flicking Lambert’s hand aside with friendly disinterest. “It’s  _ mine. _ Geralt can have some.”

Geralt lifts a brow, brushes aside a lock of hair that dangles too close to his eyes, and takes a long, long drink, without breaking Lambert’s gaze. When he sets it down again, there’s hardly enough left to wash down the remnants of the stew. Jaskier pushes it aside, sighs and orders a watered down ale.

“Is it a Witcher thing, to not have manners? Or is it just the two of you? Because, quite frankly, I’m not satisfied that either of you have ever used the word ‘please’ before. Or thank you, for that matter. That was expensive, you know.”

Geralt starts on his soup, looks dissatisfied, but keeps on at it anyways, as if dinner is a contract he must complete. “Lambert was raised by wolves, you know,” he repeats, using Jaskier’s same inflection. “And I’ve found human principles of manners, and morals to be shite.”

“Should’ve figured,” Jaskier grumbles, nursing his ale as Lambert leans forward, watching the two of them with sharp curiosity. 

“Aw, little bard hasn’t realized whose company he’s keeping for the winter?” Lambert teases. It doesn’t bother Jaskier. He’s had worse in way of teasing, and the implications of sleeping with Geralt are more painful than embarrassing. It’s not as if he doesn’t sleep around, and it’s not as if he hasn’t been called whore before. But there’s something about Lambert’s tone, the way that it sits on that line between insult and casual flirtation that makes Jaskier uneasy. 

“You lot are nothing special,” Jaskier replies. “You’re just as uncivilized as any Velen brute, nothing more, nothing less. Only thing much different is your eyes.”

Lambert smirks.

Geralt ignores Jaskier, and starts talking about the Path, and some conflict he wasn’t around to see. As the conversation meanders from lower vampires, to the current political climate of Velen, Jaskier speaks up only rarely, trying his best to decipher the new conversationalist and how, exactly, he feels about him. 

Lambert is a dick. It was an apt enough description, but it’s not entirely true. With Geralt, there is a begrudging softness between them. They snark at each other like siblings tend to do, with words that would have denoted anger or dislike if not for the history between them. When Lambert speaks to Jaskier, the difference is clear. 

There’s teasing beneath his words, something thin enough for Geralt to not comment on, and yet enough to get under Jaskier’s skin. He speaks dismissively, as if believing that Jaskier is just a passing whim for Geralt, and yet, pays attention to him anyways. As if Jaskier is worth his attention of his own accord, not just as an accessory to Geralt or his adventures. It’s an infuriating discordance, but at least a distracting one. 

“So,” Jaskier clears his throat. “Geralt insists that the best way to kill a Selkie is to get eaten by it? Care to verify that? For historical purposes, of course. Not because I care to hear your stories.”

“Right,” Lambert drawls. His movements are slow and languid, like a sunning cat, reluctant to move. “It’s time that you got your facts straight. Geralt is shit at telling stories, you know that? Terrible liar.”

“Am not. I won half of your shit last year. I can’t be too- I’m not shit at it.” 

Geralt too has that look of lethargy to him as he speaks, an uncharacteristic slowness to his words that he’d never shown before. 

“Oh?” Jaskier snorts. “Is that how you lost half of your wages from the selkimore contract? You said you were pickpocketed, but it was really-”

Geralt stands abruptly, his chair skidding back with the sudden motion. “Lies!” 

“Not lies!” Lambert corrects, slamming his fist upon the table. It’s just the three of them, the innkeeper long gone to bed, and the sound echoes that much more with no audience to hear it. “I know all, Geralt! And what I don’t know, Vesemir has told me. You were a naughty, naughty brat, White Wolf.”

Geralt snorts, and takes his seat again, nearly tripping over it’s leg. 

Lambert stills. He glances from Geralt to Jaskier and back again, and then sits back in his chair, slinging an arm over the back of it. 

This is weird. Geralt is acting like he’s drunk, but even when he’s actually been drunk he’s been in control. There’s always been a few layers between the version of himself that he shows and the one that he is beneath all that the world has made him to be. The way that he’s acting now is more akin to having another skin shucked away, like the peel of an onion being pulled away, translucent and thin. 

“What’s in this?” Lambert says finally, peering with exaggerated suspicion into the glass. When he looks up, Jaskier notices that his pupils are blown out, wide and circular. 

“I’m not sure,” Jaskier says, turning the bottle around. There’s usually a list of defining herbs or flavors on more expensive wines, to give a better idea of how to pair it. This bottle’s label is worn and old, the paper soft and crumbling against his callused fingers. He squints. “This is absinthe, not wine. It’s got anise, fennel and wormwood in it. Why? Are you allergic?”

“Oh, fuck.” 

“What?”Jaskier says, a bubble of panic rising within him. “Are you?”

Across the table, Lambert laughs to himself, swirling his drink sloppily. The sound is a sharp contrast to his previously reserved stature, and yet, distinctly familiar. “No.”

Beside him, Geralt is biting his lip and trying very hard not to smile. The result is a wavering lip that makes him look much like a child trying not to laugh at a prank he’d done on a neighbor. “It’s- it’s like catnip! Wormwood is.” He snorts. “We’re fine.”

Realization dawns on him, painfully embarrassing. “I drugged you? You’re high?”

As if to answer, Lambert leans back on his chair, pushing it onto it’s two back legs so fast that it topples over, leaving him in a pile on the ground. If it were anyone else, the sound he makes might be considered a giggle.

“Well, shit.”

This is not the introduction he’d meant to make.

“It’ll wear off soon, right? You’re not going to be like this all night, right?”

Lambert snorts, and leans on the table, blinking sleepily. “Fast metabolism. We’ll be fine.”

Jaskier should get them to bed then, before they fall asleep at the table. Fast metabolism or not, the knowledge that he’d essentially drugged the two of them is embarrassing. On a first meeting too. A thought nags at the corner of his mind that all the ‘liquor’ he’d bought is useless for the purpose of making conversation if everyone he’d intended to share it with will turn out like this, but he pushes it aside and focuses instead on dealing with them. 

He tugs on Lambert’s arm until he begrudgingly rises, leaning heavily on Jaskier’s shoulder. Already he seems sleepy, much like Jaskier is when he takes fisstech. 

“Where’re you taking me, bard?”

“Jaskier.” He corrects, leading him towards the door. Geralt stays seated, glaring at the empty bottle on the table with fixed determination. “And to your room.”

“Oh? Already to bed with me?”

Jaskier bites his lip, and ignores him.

It takes perhaps half an hour to wrestle Lambert into one of the two rooms upstairs. It’s a small inn, with three doors. One of which is locked, and the other completely bare. Jaskier assumes that the one with a collection of animal bones and dried drowner heads sitting at the foot of the bed is his, and wrestles him into bed as quickly as possible. He considers, briefly leaving him completely dressed, but the knowledge of how uncomfortable sleeping in boots and a pair of swords would be convinces him to at least take those off. 

He sighs, and slaps the toe of his left boot. “Lambert, you’ve got to take these off. Come on now. It’s bad enough I’ve got you messed up. Don’t make things harder than they have to be.”

“I’m plenty hard already.” Lambert snarks, kicking at his boots unsuccessfully. 

“Wait, wait,” Jaskier unlaces Lambert’s boots, and sets them down next to the dried heads. He sighs, and gestures at his sheathes. “Now these.”

“Are you?” Lambert asks, not even bothering to do as directed. 

“Am I, what?” Jaskier sits on the edge of the worn blanket, and fumbles with the clasps until the leather strap falls slack. As he leans over him to try and pull the swords and sheathes free, Lambert squirms, a hand grabbing roughly at his ass. “No. Bad Witcher. Stop.”

“Say it like you mean it, then, bard.” Lambert says, but doesn’t try again. He blinks owlishly, and rolls over slightly. Jaskier pulls the weapons free, and sets them on the floor. 

Thank the gods that there’s no one here to watch, and no one downstairs to worry about. His face is flushed, he notes as he passes by the broken looking glass leaning on the dresser. Redness mars his cheeks, no longer from the sting of the wind, but from something like embarrassment. In a way, this whole situation is like a big joke, similar to type one might expect a Godling to play on unwary habitants. 

No one will be hurt in the morning by the night’s events. No one will be anything but a little awkward, perhaps a bit more comfortable with each other than they had been the night previous. This might be true enough for Lambert at least. Propositioned, and insulted all in one night, whatever barriers that might have been held as the two got used to each other have been knocked down; castle walls brushed aside as easily as a child’s toy with a good drink. 

But Jaskier will remember it all clearly, while Lambert will not, and that makes all the difference.

“Bard,” Lambert calls, but doesn’t say anything else as Jaskier creeps towards the door. He pauses in the doorway, listening for anything else, but hears nothing but the wind.

Downstairs, Geralt is rummaging behind the counter, Jaskier’s abandoned cup in hand. 

“Come on,” He says, tugging at his arm. Geralt swats him away half heartedly. “Geralt, please. It’s cold and we both should get some rest, so stop fighting me on this!”

“I want to drink more. There’s no innkeep.” Geralt says annoyedly. 

Jaskier tugs harder, until Geralt relents and steps back, allowing Jaskier to pull his arm around his shoulders. “No, he went to bed, just as Lambert did. So should we, alright?”

“Fine,” Geralt walks straighter than Lambert had, only tripping over his feet a few times, and catching his balance before his weight threatens to send them both toppling to the ground. He appears to have been affected less, or is shifting from intoxication to drunken sleepiness faster than Lambert had. “Lambert’s a dickhead,” he cups a hand over his mouth, and stage whispers with all of the skill of a child soldier during his first battle, “but I think he likes you.”

“Splendid,” Jaskier says dryly. “He can show me how much he likes me by buying me some decent wine. Now, up! Come on. I can’t have you falling asleep down here. I don’t have the strength to carry you to bed.”

“I did this for you,” Geralt says, following Jaskier’s prodding with surprising obedience. “After that night. The next town we’d stopped in- I left you in the inn while I hunted a werewolf, and you got ploughed. Came back and you were-”

Jaskier shoulders open the last room, and directs Geralt towards the bed. He starts to undress without prompting, allowing Jaskier to duck back downstairs for their bags. He leaves the door open though, and can hear Geralt’s voice over the low crackle of the fire as he slings his bag over his shoulder, and clutches his lute by the neck.

“Drunk. Fucking drunk, had a tab more expensive than my sword, and I-”

As Jaskier creeps back into the room, dropping their things in a single pile before leaning against the door. It shuts quietly, startling Geralt into silence.

“I remember.” Jaskier says. “I remember you pushing away my drink, and shoving me towards the stables because I’d spent all I’d had saved, and we couldn’t afford a room.”

“Hmm.” 

“Go to bed, Geralt. Or else you’ll have a headache in the morning.”

Geralt makes a clumsy attempt at using aard to blow out the flames of the candles set on the nightstand and on the mantle, and messes with the blanket until he’s underneath. 

“You’ll share the bed?”

“Unless you can manifest another with a snap of your fingers-” Jaskier starts, snuggling back into that position which has grown so familiar over the past few months. As his ass makes contact with Geralt’s pelvis, he feels it. His erection just as familiar as the rest of it, except now, Geralt’s arm reaches around Jaskier to pull him closer, drifting down towards his crotch, slowly but insistently.

“No,” Jaskier says, gently brushing Geralt’s hand aside. He could easily become as immobile as stone, could stop pretending that the motions Jaskier makes actually affect him. He doesn’t. His hand falls limply on Jaskier’s waist. 

“Why not? I’ve seen you,” Geralt says. “Pleasure is easy enough to read, and you’re easier than most. You wake pressed against me, and I can smell it. I can smell the want all over you.”

“You’re out of your head. The drink-”

“Do you think I would ask for this,” His hand ghosts down to Jaskier’s crotch, not touching, but lingering near it with a presence like a wave cresting over a ship, inevitable, and heavy. “Without thinking about it before? Without smelling it on you every morning, and anticipating it every night?”

“Geralt.” Jaskier’s voice is hushed. The wind outside the window is louder than him. Louder than his quickening heartbeat, louder than the cycle of inhales and exhales, louder still than his words. “Geralt, are you- We’re friends. That’s all we are. That’s what you agreed to, and this-” He shakes his head. He can feel Geralt’s breath on the back of his neck, warm and still. “This would destroy it. It’s a line that cannot be uncrossed. Do you understand that? I couldn’t not remember it, let it go- pretend like we’ve been doing.”

“I asked you to talk.”

“And for once, I can’t.”

Geralt doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t move closer either. He falls still, and breathes. Jaskier can feel his erection pressing into the small of his back just like he does every morning when they wake up entangled together, and Jaskier pretends, he always pretends- but right now, who is he pretending for?

Jaskier wants. He yearns for Geralt like the sailor yearns for the sea. There is no home for him to return to, none that he wants anyway; but being here, even now when it hurts, is all that he wants. 

He shifts backwards. 

Geralt lets out a groan like an accident.

Jaskier pauses mid-movement. “Won’t Lambert be able to smell it?”

And Geralt laughs, rolling onto his back. The blanket pulls taut around then, pinned under Geralt’s weight. A gush of cool air fills the space between them, and without thinking, Jaskier squirms back beside him. 

“Probably,” Geralt admits. He looks down at Jaskier with half lidded eyes. His pupils are not as round as they were before, and have regained at least some of their usual pointedness. He’s not sober, but he’s not entirely intoxicated either. “But I doubt he’ll want to speak about tonight, or tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow seems like a dream,” Jaskier murmurs, as he considers. 

It is up to him, he supposes, as to which mistake he wants to make. For if he does as Geralt says he wants, he’d be happy, sure, but in the morning, would Geralt really feel the same way? And if he does not, how could he ever bare the rest of the winter locked in a keep with him? How could he not touch himself to the memory of those words, and curse himself for not taking the chance?

Downstairs, the fire is dying, and just beyond the window, snow builds in large drifts, hiding the road from view. In this room, it feels like they are alone in the world, as if everything outside of this place has halted.

Jaskier takes a deep breath, though he knows that it’s not a choice, not really, and tries to find the right words to say, and yet, before he can utter a damned word, the quiet sound of snoring begins just behind him. He’s asleep. 

Just like that, the choice doesn’t matter anymore. Or at least, not to anyone but himself. And with that, he turns onto his back, and tries to fall asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, *ahem* ten points to whoever can guess what the next plot point/trope will be.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just moved into my first apartment, and realized, uh,,, rent and utilities? Are expensive. Plus I've had summer work, etc, and It's kind of all added up to me not working on this for a while. However, I do have the next chapter planned! So it shouldn't be too long! Thank you for reading and reviewing! Y'all's comments literally make my day so much! Like, I be checking my email every five minutes after posting just to make sure I don't miss one!

In the morning, the snow gleams bright and shining against the muddled brown and grey roofs, as if mimicking the snow capped mountaintops in the distance. From the window of their shared room, Jaskier can see someone shoveling snow out of the road in the main square, but they’ve not finished much. Water drips rhythmically down the window pane, predicting the quick melt. At second glance, the snow’s not all that much. Certainly not enough to last the day, which means, thankfully, they can leave soon. 

Geralt is still sleeping. 

Jaskier isn’t sure what to do. 

Sometime in the midst of the night, the innkeep stoked the fire once more, allowing warmth to fill the halls. Through the loosely slotted floorboards, heat soaks the room, keeping the chill at bay except for right beside the window where it creeps through the gap to weave it’s tendrils down his tunic as he peers through it. 

Is this how Geralt had felt back then? When Jaskier had died, and come back? When that man had tried to- Is this it?

Because Jaskier thinks he understands. How hard it must’ve been to go on afterwards, as if nothing had happened. Despite knowing that taking action would have been just as disastrous, just as hard to move on from, holding the knowledge of the night is just as bad. The memory is unrelenting, and had played through his mind all night, refracted in dreams that passed along more like a fever than real sleep. Geralt had wanted him, just as Jaskier had wanted him from the very moment they had met-  _ but it’s not enough _ .

Jaskier has been falling in love for years, deeply each time, no matter how short the acquaintance, and yet- and yet-

He doesn’t think he could handle this being something as simple as a matter of convenience. Geralt can’t even call him his friend; Jaskier can’t ask for him to call him his paramour, and yet, he wants nothing more than to be held in those arms, and to be loved back. And so the torture goes on and on; he should’ve done something, he’s glad he didn’t, and it aches, oh of course it does. The words spill like water into the pages of his journal; he doesn’t write any full songs, or verses, but he has enough to catch the pain of the moment. If something beautiful comes of his pain, then doesn’t that make it worth something? Doesn’t that give it meaning? 

Jaskier hears someone cough downstairs. Either the innkeep, or Lambert, given that there had been no other patrons. He can’t sit here, staring out the window and thinking about it any longer. He stands, pulls on another shirt over the three layers he’s already wearing, and creeps downstairs, grabbing his shoes from beside the door as he closes it. 

Lambert is sitting in the same place as they had been the night before, staring pensively at the empty bottle of absinthe.

“So,” Jaskier clears his throat, leaning against the wall as he shoves his foot into one boot. “About last night-”

“I’ve got a fuckin’ headache, but I remember.” He scowls, swirling the remnants of the drink, and sniffing tentatively at it’s open rim. “You drugged me.”

“Did not! You asked for a drink. Geralt never said anything about-” Jaskier shoves on the other shoes, pausing as he rights himself. He takes a deep breath, remembers the game that they’re apparently playing, where Lambert tries to dig under Jaskier’s skin, and tries again. “I didn’t know. I just thought I was doing the polite civilized thing, and sharing,” And then, more quietly, he adds, “I’m sorry.”

“Hmm.”

Jaskier cleans off the table, setting the bottle and empty glasses on the counter as he ducks behind it, in search for breakfast. There’s a few loaves of cold, hard bread lying on a shelf, but little else. Eggs would’ve been taken in the early morning from the market, which is closed, and while Jaskier is sure that there’s meat somewhere, he doesn’t want to spend half the morning rooting around for it. 

He takes two loaves to the table, giving Lambert the least hard of the two, and settles down in the same seat he’d taken the night before. Jaskier studies Lambert pensively, watching as he tears a chunk free, and then, noting Jaskier’s gaze, stares back, as if daring him to say something.

Jaskier can’t understand how one would find those yellow eyes anything but beautiful. 

“Shit’s like hardtack. Grab the cider off the coals.” 

Jaskier does as told. The pitcher is full, and warm, the scent of spiced apples strong in the air as he carries it to the table, grabbing two new cups before sitting down. As he pours them both a drink, Lambert leans back, leather creaking as he slumps into the worn chair.

“It’s still a week’s ride to the keep,” Lambert says, dunking chunks of bread into the warmed cider. He tears at it with sharp teeth, and a soggy strip pulls free, hanging over his lips in a way that is distinctly familiar. Whilst chewing, Lambert continues, “Makes no sense to split up now.”

“Haven’t you heard that traveling in odd numbers is bad luck?”

“Haven’t you heard,” Lambert repeats mockingly, a certain playfulness glinting in his golden eyes. The roundness in his pupils from the night before has left, it’s predatory sharpness returned. He’s teasing jaskier again, his tone verging on flirtation. “That traveling with witchers brings even worse luck?”

Jaskier doesn’t believe him. Geralt may say it, Lambert may say it, and the whole damn whole can say it with the conviction of a dying man finding god, but he swears- it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks. Witchers are no different from any other man; they may have eyes like cats, and be able to do amazing things, but what separates them from everyone else is the otherness that they wear like armor wrapped them, as if it’ll defend from the emotional hurt that comes with their profession.

Jaskier can’t say that, though. Of course not. He tears off a small piece of bread, figuring that Geralt will likely be hungry when he wakes and therefore need more of it than he, and asks instead, “Why’s that?”

“Well, you’ve got the scars,” Lambert’s eyes flick down to his hand as he lazily dunks another piece of bread into his tankard. It’s the mark. Of course it’s the mark. He’d forgotten to hide it, and his mistake hadn’t been overlooked. “So you must’ve met the kind of company we attract.”

“As I’ve told Geralt, there’s trouble aplenty. I’d find just as much on my own as I do with him.”

“Possibly,” Lambert drawls. “But we’re also territorial, don’t like to share. That’s why we travel alone, walk different paths.”

“Doesn’t sound much like Geralt. He makes friends all the time, though he’s loath to admit to it.”

Lambert only grins. 

“So that’s the oh so scary danger?” Jaskier scoffs, tapping the bread against the table. It doesn’t break or crack or splinter. “That you’ll show affection? Seems much tamer than the other shite.”

“No, no. That’s not it. If you’re  _ unlucky _ , we’ll get attached.”

“S’not the worst thing in the world to have a witcher for a friend.” Jaskier says. “I might even try for two.”

“Oh?” Lambert takes Jaskier’s statement as casually as one might take the proclamation of what’s for dinner. “So why don’t you want me to come along?”

“I never said that I didn’t, I just-”

Upstairs, a door slams, and Geralt walks down on silent feet. Lambert gives Geralt a shit eating grin as he takes a seat, mirroring how they’d been the night before. Jaskier slides the remaining bread towards Geralt, who takes it, ripping off a piece with the same lack of manners as Lambert had had. He coughs, takes the closest cup, which happens to be Jaskier’s, and takes a long drink.

“Morning, princess.” Lambert teases.

“Fuck off,” Geralt says into the cup. 

“Ah, yes,” Jaskier pats Geralt’s shoulder comfortingly. “It appears that last night hasn’t affected your temperament much; you’re as grouchy as ever.” The words slip free like inhibitions after too much wine; He hadn’t meant to say anything about it. He’d meant to never speak of it again, even when Geralt brought it up, tucked away like all of those other things he’s pressed into the ‘not to be messed with’ section of his mind. 

He can’t let it phase him. Geralt would note the hiccup in his breath, the hesitation of his heartbeat. And so, Jaskier lets it go, and pushes onwards.

“You never said anything about anything affecting you that way,” Jaskeir says, drawing his mug back for a final swig to finish his bread off with. It;s better than last night’s ale, that’s for sure.“The point was to share, you know as guests often do. I wouldn’t have bought so many otherwise. It’s not  _ that _ good.”

Geralt shrugs. Ah, good. So they won’t be talking about it, just like how Lambert hadn’t brought up his flirtatious behavior from the night before. Fine with him. Better this way, even.

“S’good enough,” Lambert kicks his feet up onto the table. Geralt knocks them aside, nearly spilling the remaining ale as Lambert adjusts, moving his boots a satisfactory distance away from their food. “If there’s no one there to slit my throat while I’m at it, I don’t mind getting fucked up like that again.”

Jaskier snorts. “That’s counting on me sharing again; you never even so much as said thank you when you stole it from me last night.”

Geralt snorts.

“Same goes for you. Not everything is as cheap as the shite you usually drink, you know.”

Geralt has the grace to look away, as if Jaskier were talking about someone else’s drinking habits.

The fire crackles against the stone hearth, higher than it had been the night before. They’d gotten lucky. The storm was short, hardly even bad enough to be considered a real storm. With how tricky the paths have been this far, Jaskier gets why Geralt had wanted to stop. The townsfolk will likely spend the next few days bulking up on firewood, drying out what they can and storing it for when the real storm hits; but for now, they can afford to be warm, and for that Jaskier is grateful.

He steals his cup back, refills it, and drinks it, even though there’s plenty of crumbs mixed in with the lukewarm cider. The two witchers are comfortable in their silence, picking at their unsatisfactory breakfasts as the sun slowly rises higher outside. It’s still not warm out there, but through the window, it appears that the worst of the snow has melted. The path, where it had been treacherous, and icy the night before, now looks to be miserably muddy. Jaskier doesn’t mention it, knowing that his complaints will fall on deaf ears, and rises to pack up the rest of their things with resolved determination. When he returns, his lute and pack slung over his shoulder, the two are still talking amicably.

Or maybe not. They’re standing now, not sitting as he’d left them, and the two are entirely too close for polite conversation. Lambert’s lips are curled back in a taunting grin that borders on a snarl, his arms crossed as Geralt’s hands curl into fists by his side. They know when Jaskier pauses, eyes flitting between one black leather clad man to the other. Geralt glances at him. Lambert smirks.

They draw away from each other at the same time, and Geralt mutters something with a whole lot of ‘fucks’ in it as he grabs his things from Jaskier, and heads for the door.

“Ready to hit the road?” Lambert asks, still grinning. 

“What was all that about?” Jaskier says, watching him go. A harsh wind slips in behind Geralt, and despite being next to the fire, it makes Jaskier shiver. He pulls his coat a little tighter, adjusts the bags over his shoulder. “The posturing and whatnot.”

“Nothing,” Lambert says, slipping past him and to the stairs. A hand ghosts across his hip. Accidental, probably. “Just friendly competition.” 

###

There is only a single road going in and out of town. Jaskier hadn’t noticed the night before. He was too cold, and too tired to take notice of something that Geralt was in charge of anyway. But as the three of them ride towards the keep, the hooves of their horses marking a rhythmic squish in the mud below, he can tell that something’s off. Roach keeps trying to veer to the right, onto the desire paths making their way into the icy forest. While most of the night’s winter storm has melted away into a brisk fall chill, unwelcoming ice remains in the shadows, making Roach’s desire to go there ever so much more suspicious. 

Lambert’s mare does the same, as if sticking to the wonderfully flat, simple, easy to transverse path is as obviously unwelcoming as an endrega den. Only Jaskier’s horse, sweet as she is, stays on course, moving at the same slow but determined pace as the others. That too, is odd. With the sudden turn of the weather, he’d think that the two would want to reach their destination sooner rather than later.

So why the changes? Why take that single, straight path when they obviously want to take the other one? And most importantly, why not say a damn thing to Jaskier when there’s obviously a valid reason behind it all?

Water drips from the melting snow of the branches above. Already, his coat is damp from it’s consistent fall. Jaskier doesn’t dare take his lute from it’s case, lest the water strike it while he tries to play something. There’s nothing much to do now but watch or talk, or think, and so he settles on the less painful of the three.

“Geralt,” Jaskier leans forward in the saddle, arm tucked under his head as he leans on his horse, and watches the keep loom above them in the distance, as distant and vague as summer heat in the midst of winter. “Geralt, why does Roach want to take the murder-death trail over there? Is there something wrong with this one?”

“Hmm.”

“Not an answer.” Jaskier points out.

Geralt sighs, but doesn’t turn away. As they move farther and farther from the town, it becomes more and more obvious how high they are, and how isolated that makes them. To Jaskier’s right is a beautiful view of the lands below; fields, and rivers becoming apparent beneath the sharp slope of the mountain, but to their left is the mountain itself, pressing against them as they rise higher and higher towards their destination. There are overhangs, and chokepoints, and nooks in the rock where one could easily hide, just out of view. Lambert’s hand, Jaskier notes, keeps drifting towards the dagger on his hip. A nervous tick, Jaskier’d reckon, though he knows he wouldn’t admit to it being so.

“There’s nothing wrong. Just prefer the other one.”

Jaskier tilts his head. Even if he were blind, he’d be able to spot the lie. Who does Geralt think he is? Some average imbecile, prone to mistaking a bruxa for a succubus?

Insulting, is what it is. Jaskier turns to Lambert, blinking slowly as the sway of his horse combines with the lack of sleep. He could fall asleep riding at the pace they’re currently at.

“Lambert,” Jaskier draws his damp coat tighter around him, and draws the word out like the first note of a song. “Why?”

Geralt gives Lambert a look, obvious even with Jaskier slightly behind them, that says, say something and I’ll push you right off this mountain. Lambert twists, looks at Jaskier straight in the eyes, and says, “We’re more likely to get robbed on this one, is what he’s not telling you. We never take it, ‘cept in the spring when the snows block off the worst of the ambushers.”

Jaskier sits up, pulls the reins until his horse stops. “Then let’s go that way?”

Lambert stops first, then Geralt. Their reluctance to respond is as visible as the mending on his shoulder where Jaskier had sewn up a tear a month prior. 

“Tell me the truth or else I’ll turn around, and get lost trying to go the other way, and you’ll have to follow me or else I’ll die a horrible death and haunt you forever.”

“Could get rid of you easy, if you were to haunt one of us,” Lambert points out. 

Jaskier ignores him and resolutely ignores the instinct to cross his arms and stick out his tongue like a child.

Geralt sighs. “We can’t.”

“What do you mean we- You two apparently do it every year? What makes it so bad that I can’t?”

Lambert rolls his eyes. “Trust me, you can’t. It’s better for you to go this way, and it’s better for all of us to get through the pass before it hits nightfall, or else we’ll have to make camp there. That enough information for you, bard?”

“I think informing a traveling companion about your plans before dragging them all the way up a scary, cold death mountain would have been nice, but forgoing that,” Jaskier slumps back as he had before, letting his eyelids fall heavier and heavier as they continue on. “ _ Yes _ , Lambert. That’s good enough.”

They travel for most of the day, not stopping except for once when Jaskier falls victim to his bodily functions, and has to relieve himself. Jaskier’s sleepiness wears off eventually, as the cold is as brutish to his sleepiness as Geralt is to the general public, but still they continue on. At first, the pass that Lambert had referred to had not been so obvious. There were trees and cliffs but that hardly qualified. But as the elevation rose higher, the air growing ever more cold and biting, rock began to rise up again on both sides, darkening the sun as it enclosed them within. It unsettles Jaskier, in a way that most things don’t. It’s not the environment, per se, that makes him uneasy, but the way that Lambert’s shoulders tense, his hand finally pulling his dagger free to hold it between his palms and the reins; or Geralt’s careful glances, studying the walls and overhangs as if they were the curves and dips of a maiden’s nude form, and occasionally flicking back to Jaskier with the same level of scrutiny. 

Jaskier doesn’t like it. Or well, better said, he does, but doesn’t like that it reminds him of the previous night, and the offer, and the words he’d said, unaware of how easily they’d take Jaskier apart. 

Jaskier keeps his gaze elsewhere. 

The sun is peeking through the clouds now, gleaming through the trees and shrubbery clutching to the walls, and dangling from the jutting cliffs above. It catches on the last remaining vestiges of green, just like it does in the spring. It reminds Jaskier of a song he’d learned before leaving Oxenfurt, one often sung ceremonially in the south when spring broke.

His fingers move to position, the shape of a lute so familiar that it feels like he’s holding it, like the strings are thrumming beneath them. The words slip out, low and sweet, the opposite of the traditional soprano rendering.

‘The rose puts on her red;

The leaves on the trembling trees

Grow forth with eagerness.

The moon sends forth her brightness;

The lily is lovely to see,

The fennel and chervil.

Woo these wild drakes;

Beasts entertain their mates,

As streams which ever flow.

Sad ones moan, so do many more;

I know I am one of those,

Who are ill-pleased with love”

There’s more to it. A verse before this and a verse after this one, of course, but Jaskier knows how finicky Geralt can be with his singing. Even with a proper audience, a real instrument in his arms, he appears unenthused at the best of times, and Lambert- well, Jaskier has yet to gauge his reaction to a true performance. It’s not that he’s self conscious; he has songs to practice for the competitions in the spring, and he’ll damn well make use of the acoustics of the mountains when they reach their destination, but the two are on edge, and he’s not sure if breaking their concentration is such a good decision. 

The silence falls heavy in the space where his words were. Birds call out in the distance, faint against the howling of the wind, suddenly loud and roaring. 

“What,” Jaskier asks, unable to help himself. He’s been more than quiet enough since Lambert broke the news. “No applause? No coins thrown at my feet? Not even bread? Remember that, Geralt? The first time we met, I had bread in my pants from being boo’d off the stage. Lost quite a bit of it when I followed you afterwards.”

“Was your own damn fault,” Geralt points out, “And the bread was stale.” 

Lambert snorts. “That how you meet?” The free hand gestures something at Geralt, who nods, let’s his horse fall back as Lambert continues talking. “No damsel in distress? No saving you from an angry basilisk? Tsk, tsk. The stories disappoint.”

Geralt holds out a hand, and points to the ground. Footprints, fresh ones, imprinted in the earth, softened by the melted snow. Among them, a green ribbon, of the sort given to sweethearts when one goes off to war, lies half submerged beneath someone’s heel. It doesn’t take much to connect the two with Lambert’s earlier words. There’s an ambush coming up ahead, and they have no choice but to push on forward. 

“So,” Jaskier says cheerfully, ignoring the ill feeling settling in the bottom of his stomach. “An encore?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song in this chapter is technically kinda historically accurate? and really pretty. Come listen here: http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/medlyric/lenten.php


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not gonna lie. This chapter revised and rewritten like three times and I'm sick of looking at it. I'm going to edit it later, when I reread for my own pleasure but for now- Thank you all very much for reading and don't forget to review. I also posted another witcher story that focuses on lambert/jaskier. So check it out!
> 
> Edit: I went back and edited a bit for clarity. Nothing really changed of importance. Just a few redundant sentences etc, which if you read prior to this edit, you likely noticed.

Jaskier feigns disinterest as long as he can, and by performing calmness, he does manage to achieve a certain level of it within himself. After all, he’s traveling with not one, but _two_ witchers, and he trusts them. Geralt wouldn’t offer to take him here if he wasn’t sure that he could keep Jaskier from dying on the way there; it would be a shame to let his revival go to waste, after all. And Geralt obviously trusts Lambert, so Jaskier will too. There’s nothing to worry about, truly.

That doesn’t do much to ease the anxiety that rises up within him as the pass twists around the mountainside, bringing a felled tree into view. 

There’s little but brush here; shrubs, and weeds that thrive in the damp air, and indirect sunlight. The only trees are from way above, which is to say, either this tree fell a few hundred feet, miraculously not splintering on the way down, and managed to lodge itself in a way that makes it difficult to get past on horseback, _or_ \- and Jaskier would bet all of his coin, if he were a betting man that is, on _this_ : it was placed there deliberately. 

This is the ambush that they’ve been anticipating. This is it!

Lambert and Geralt slow their horses to a stop, angled ever so slightly to allow them each to keep a good view of the wall closest to them. Jaskier stops too. He stays a few feet behind so as to avoid being stabbed by an errant blade if they were to suddenly spring into action, but leans forward eagerly to watch the scene unfold. He looks at the tree, and then to Geralt, whose expression is studious and grim, like a student walking into an exam he knows he did not study nearly enough for. 

And Lambert, well, Jaskier doesn’t know him well enough to know exactly what his sharp toothed grin and serious eyes means, but he’s well enough versed in translating ‘Witcher’ to guess.

He’s not happy for the violence, per se, but he is excited. Agitated, perhaps. 

Jaskier shifts in his saddle. Ahead, beyond the tree, and the stone, he can see greenery again where the forest sprouts up once more. It’s far, but not so far that making a run for it is entirely impossible. The dagger he keeps in his boot feels suddenly hot against his skin despite the damp chill that has leaked through during the day’s trek. His fingers itch to pull it out, to hold it, just in case someone gets too close. 

Geralt sighs, annoyed. “Fuck.”

“Yes.” Lambert says, staring at the tree, shifting his grip on the dagger to the kind of hold often used for throwing. “Any thoughts on how we might move this tree, bard?”

“Uh, with your magical witcher powers?” Jaskier suggests. “Or perhaps I could sing a pretty song and convince it to move on it’s own. What do you think, Geralt? If I ask nicely, will it politely move itself out of the way?”

Geralt grunts, head tilting slightly towards the center of the tree, where the leaves are thickest, and a splash of red is visible through the branches. What kind of idiot wears such a bright color when attempting an ambush? 

"Magical witcher powers? Well, shite. Why didn't we think of that?"

Lambert nods. In unison, the two hold their hands out, palms forward, and bend the middle finger slightly, as if doing the opposite of a rather vulgar hand sign. The effect is immediate. The tree flies back thirty yards, moving with it whoever was attempting to hide behind it. A single shoe is left stuck in the mud, it’s wearer long gone. Geralt slips down from the saddle and peers down at the place where the trap had been laid. It must have rained some since it was set up, as Jaskier can’t tell if that there’s a footprint or a mere divot in the mud. 

Lambert grins, lip pulling back over his canines as he tosses the dagger at an outcropping not far from Jaskier’s head. There’s a yelp like what one would expect from a kicked dog, and then someone tumbles out, hardly managing to regain his footing as he slides down the rock facing and onto the path. Jaskier has always had an eye for details, so even as others begin to curse and scowl, stepping free of their hiding places and into the path, he picks out the things that will make a good story when this is all done and over with. 

They are dirty. Geralt is often dirty, given that blood and guts and general messiness seems to be a mainstay of his profession, but these men are different. In addition to the mud clinging to the cuffs of their pants, and the blood smeared dry and browning across their gambesons, their clothes are old. Older and more worn than anyone with a choice would ever wear. Rips tear down the center of their gambesons and tunics, gaping holes line their trousers. The man Lambert had struck has sunken eyes, and a yellow pallor to his skin. 

Their attackers are desperate. No one else would try this attack, especially after seeing what Geralt and Lambert can do with just a flick of their fingers. This is why Geralt decided to press on, even with Jaskier along with him. It is also why he was hesitant to explain his reluctance to travel this way.

“Do you think you can make it to the treeline and wait there?”

This- all of this- is a ballad in the making! Normally, Jaskier has to trail behind Geralt, sneaking off to watch even when warned not to, or else worrying the details out of him after it’s all over. This has led to inaccuracies, inaccuracies that Geralt never says a damn thing about until long after it’s been penned and performed. He’s nervous, but who wouldn’t be? 

Jaskier swallows. “I, uh, she’s not really known for speed, Geralt.”

  
  


Geralt cocks his head, and draws his sword, just as Lambert’s mark begins to swing his flail, blood darkening his coat as he raises it above his head, ignoring the dagger wedged neatly into his shoulder blade. The injury only compounds the hunger evident in his gaze. The result is less an attack, and more of a charge. The steepness doesn’t allow him to slow, even as Geralt plunges his sword forward, impaling him in the thigh. 

The man screams as he’s pushed off the blade by another flick of the fingers, landing so hard against the stone wall that blood bubbles up through his lips as he slides to the ground. Rocks skid and roll down into the path from somewhere up above, warning of a potential landslide. 

“Careful,” Lambert cautions. “‘Fore you bring the whole damn mountain down on us.”

“Hmm.” Geralt agrees, but doesn’t try it again. The others have decided to keep their distance, clustering in groups of twos and threes in a sort of semi circle around them. None have tried to attack from behind; another sign of a lack of foresight. If they were truly screwed, it wouldn’t be difficult to turn tail and go. 

Geralt wrenches Jaskier down as Lambert slides into a defensive position to cover him. With a swat to her rump, Jaskier horse takes off, nearly tampling the forming crowd ahead of them. A man tries to reach for her as she passes by, but finds himself without an arm as Lambert slashes upwards, separating him from her reigns. 

Geralt positions Jaskier behind them, and takes his place once more beside Lambert.

Jaskier counts ten men, excluding the one already dead,and the one without an arm, as they continue their uneasy standoff. One in the back wields a crossbow. The others carry an assortment of chipped cavalry weapons. In the end, the bowman fires first, setting loose a bolt in the space between the two witchers, directly towards Jaskier’s chest.

He doesn’t move out of the way; even if he wanted to, there’s little room to maneuver. Geralt curses, and deflects it, sending it splintering into the wall of the pass. He tilts his head at Lambert, not looking away from their attackers as they are unfrozen from whatever spell had caused them to pause, and as if some unspoken agreement had taken place between them, a violent dance starts as they burst into motion.

Two men try for Geralt at once, while a third tries to slip between Lambert and Geralt. Despite having a flail nearly a hand’s width from his face, Lambert ducks easily, slicing into the back of the man’s leg before he can break through. 

Another bolt passes by, this one cutting the top of Jaskier’s left arm, but not striking through it. 

He hardly feels it.

Geralt shoves back against the chest of a broad man, using the unbalanced swing of his short sword against the rotation of his companion’s mace. It tangles, and the resulting mess slices quickly through the sword wielder’s chest as he tumbles. As the man with the mace attempts to disentangle his weapon, Geralt charges forward, slashing diagonally through his shoulder to the other side. He kicks it aside as a fourth stumbles back in an attempt to avoid Lambert’s upwards strike, only to find himself on his back, with a sword coming down into his skull. 

Six left. 

There’s little room for fancy maneuvering, which Jaskier supposes would be a detriment for swordsmen less masterful, but in this case, it only manages to further turn the tables in Geralt and Lambert’s favor. Only four men can stand abreast, but doing so decreases their ability to move, making their movements stunted and slow. Attempting to attack one by one would be no better, as they're at a distinct disadvantage against such skilled swordsman.

“Never too late to surrender.” Geralt says, and Jaskier remembers like a wave breaking across the shore, why he loves him. 

“Whoreson,” A man in what was once a green cloak raises his morning star, narrowly missing the head of the man beside him as it lifts it in an wavering swing. Before it can fall, Geralt blocks the blow, and redirects it back at an angle that forces him off balance, knocking him back a few feet. The archer sends a bolt flying into his back, finishing the job. 

The man beside him, a boy really, with dirty hair that was once blond, pauses, looks uneasily between the corpses cluttering the floor, and the two men in front of him. Cautiously, he lowers his axe, and backs away. 

“Good choice,” Lambert huffs, tossing a dagger through the newfound gap to land in the cheek of the archer. His last arrow goes wild, landing somewhere far above them. 

Geralt and Lambert look perfectly at home as two men attempt to take on Geralt. One aims low with a bludgeon, as the other tries for Geralt’s neck. Jaskier watches wide eyed, as Geralt jumps, landing on the wooden club as he redirects the sword into his companions’s back. He gurgles and falls back, knocking the other man down. Geralt finishes him off simply, with a stab through the eye socket, before twisting to take care of a young man’s attempt to strike Lambert in the back.

It’s not a lack of skill, but a total and complete trust in one another. Jaskier can do little more than stand still and watch the dance that they create together. He’s so engrossed in the scene before him that he only notices the man sliding down the cliffs to his left when he lands, and charges Jaskier’s way. A newcomer to the ring, much too late to change the outcome. To either side is rock. There’s nowhere to run to, and so instead, Jaskier channels the excitement churning in the bottom of his stomach to his hands.

He pulls the silver sword free of Geralt’s scabbard. Too engrossed in his own battle, he can’t stop him or turn to protest as Jaskier raises it, and then ducking into a low lunge he only vaguely remembers from his childhood lessons, strikes across his stomach. Silver or no, the sword is sharp, and the man’s skin and clothes split at its touch. A spurt of blood sprays across Jaskier’s face, and down the front of his damp coat and doublet. The man’s simple leather gambeson leeches the color from his blood, turning a dark brown where it had once been blue, much like his own clothes often are. 

Intestines and other things that should remain within the body instead of outside of it begin to fall, and as a gentle hand wrenches the sword free from Jaskier’s grip, and out of the corpse, the man falls. 

Jaskier blinks and wipes at his face, but the blood only smears. 

“Hey,” Lambert says, handing the sword back to Geralt. “You did good, eh? Seems like Geralt’s getting rusty.” He offers Jaskier a hand, and it’s only then that he realizes that Lambert is dirty too. Blood splatters across his cheek, and stains the shoulder of his armor in a way that only one familiar with the the particular hue blood soaked leather takes would notice. 

Jaskier takes it, realizing quite suddenly that he’s on his knees in the cold mud. “You’re not hurt?”

“Ha,” Lambert pulls him to his feet, and flicks something soft and warm off of Jaskier’s cheek. “Of course not. That was easy.”

“Right,” A harsh wind blows, and Jaskier shivers as he crosses his arms. There’s dead men all around, and while he would normally care somewhat more about such a massacre, all he feels is relief. “Easy.”

Sometimes he forgets that there are real and considerable differences between him and Geralt’s ilk, more so than can be ascribed to their differing professions. Who else but a pair of witchers would be able to kill- Jaskier does a quick count, giving up once he realizes that more than a few are too broken to guess at. At least eleven. Who else would be able to kill so many, so thoroughly? Despite himself, despite the fear of the moment, and the chill running deep into his bones, Jaskier finds the thought, and more so, the sight of the two of them surrounded by carnage, dripping with it even- it’s, quite frankly, arousing.

Jaskier is thankful for the chill, which keeps said attraction from being visible through his breeches. 

“Is there a pond or stream or something of the like ahead?” Jaskier says, stepping carefully over the head of gaunt faced corpse with hair just a shade lighter than his own. 

There’s a lingering feeling, one of the kind that he’s been feeling ever since he died, that doesn’t feel entirely like his own. Jaskier can’t put a feeling on it, besides it’s foreignness, and that it feels warm. It’s entirely at odds with the chill now running violently through him, as if the blood had invited it in. Jaskier does his best to ignore it. 

Lambert picks up the pace as Geralt wipes his blade off with the shirt of a dead man. Jaskier hurries to keep up, feeling every brush of the wind across his skin as one might a blade.

It takes time to pass by the area smeared with blood, despite their brisk pace. The tree, which is now pressed parallel against the eastern wall, has something pinned beneath it, squirming ever so slightly in what might be death throes. He might have seen something jovially red beneath it, but looks away and in doing so, accidentally meets Geralt’s gaze.

They are narrowed, focused in a way that Jaskier can only describe as suspicious. “You smell like blood.”

“Well, yes, Geralt. I am in fact covered in it, which is why I’d love a nice, clean body of water right about now, and if possible, some soap.”

Geralt wrenches him to a stop, fingers digging into his shoulder to hold him still. His fingertips pull away bloody, but he doesn’t seem to notice as he pulls Jaskier’s sleeve away from his arm where it tore, and scowls. 

“You’re bleeding. Didn’t you notice?”

“Uh, not particularly. I’m a bit more preoccupied with the blood soaking into my very expensive coat.”

“Loosen up, Geralt,” Lambert says. “I’ll clean it up for him while we get presentable. How’s that for manners, bard? There’s a stream not far from here. We can clean up and make camp for the night.”

“Bit early for camp,” Geralt says, releasing Jaskier’s arm. 

“Consider it a prize for the bard,” Lambert mimes holding up a glass. “To not dying like a whoreson!”

Jaskier snorts, and mimes raising his own glass. Geralt doesn’t seem overly impressed by their show of playfulness. He adjusts the swords, and marches on silently, ignoring the two with the sort of coldness he’d shown when they’d first met. Jaskier tries not to think too hard about how Geralt’s silence dampers his mood, and instead walks beside Lambert, enjoying the view and jovial conversation.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some people have been leaving such wonderous comments that I've been super inspired to write?? Like normally I don't write stories this long, or this quickly?? But y'all have been bringing the comments, and I've been bringing the words in return. 
> 
> Thank you for reading and commenting!

Jaskier is unsure when the sight of a slow river began to excite him just as much as the warm hearth of an inn, or the flare of attraction in the eyes of a prospective bedfellow. It must have happened at some point after he began traveling with Geralt, he knows that much, because prior to making his acquaintance, Jaskier always found a way to get clean in a respectful, proper way; but the exact date, the exact pinpointed moment when he’d stopped clinging to the remaining vestiges of his pampered upbringing- that moment is lost to him now. 

All that Jaskier can be sure of is that he truly appreciates that there is in fact a river in front of him. He doesn’t think he could wait until they made it to the next town, which is a day’s travel away, and the final vestige of civilization before they reach the keep. 

He fidgets, shifting from foot to foot as he waits for Lambert to fish a rag and bar of soap from his saddlebags. Jaskier wishes he’d been able to find his horse as easily as Geralt had been able to call Roach. He’d have a nice change of clothes, and scented soap, among other necessities. Honestly, Jaskier should be thankful that Lambert has soap, at all. Geralt seems to think that it’s something that can be forgone if a lack of coin forces his hand, unlike alcohol, or sword oil, which he’s always sure to replenish.

“Here,” Lambert tosses the two in Jaskier’s general direction, startling him out of his thoughts as he hurries to catch them. “Oughta strip, hurry and get clean before Geralt’s back. He’s in a bit of a mood.”

“Geralt was like that when I first met him,” Jaskier says, setting down the bundle on a nearby stone. “I’m beginning to think he might have sour deposition.” 

“Not always,” Lambert says, more seriously. The blood that smeared across his armor has apparently also leaked into the cloth beneath it, and as he lifts the gambeson and sets it aside, Jaskier can see where splatters of it have stained his upper thigh, and the cuffs of his pants. “Just when he needs to get laid.”

Jaskier makes an undignified sound as he attempts to laugh, snort, and stay silent all at the same time. “That so?” He reluctantly peels off his coat, shivering as the cool air hits his dampened skin. The doublet he wore beneath it isn’t stained nearly as bad as his trousers, but more than enough to convince him that it too needs a wash. “Then he can hire a whore like the rest of us, or try his hand at the romantic arts.”

Lambert pauses as he sets aside his boots. He watches Jaskier, as if the image of him struggling to strip off his blood slicked trousers without getting them muddy is something of interest, and then shrugs. “One town left. Not a lot of whores around.”

Jaskier isn’t sure what to say to that, so he stays quiet, leaning with one hand against a nearby tree as he kicks off his boots. He picks up the soap and washcloth, and plunges into the river. 

It’s easiest, he knows, to go full out when he has to do something pleasant. Shoveling shit goes faster if one puts their entire back into it; and this ice cold, horrible unpleasant wash will be easier to stomach if he accepts that the water is cold right off the bat. 

He straightens up, not leaving the water even though his teeth chatter, and begins to wash the worst of the blood from his hair. 

Lambert, now nude, walks into the water as if it were a warm summer day, as welcoming as a warm bed, and grinning all the while. Jaskier wonders briefly if he can smile without looking smug, without the corners of his mouth tilting from a perfectly personable, and perfunctory expression to become a taunting smirk. He falls back, arms behind his back as he slips into a backfloat. His dark hair plasters to his skin, and despite himself, despite knowing that looking is as good as an admission, and invitation, even, Jaskier finds his gaze falling to the expanse of his exposed chest.

He has scars. Of course he does. It’s as obvious a statement as ‘Jaskier can play the lute’, and yet, seeing them is altogether a different thing than simply knowing of their existence. There’s one across his chest, tapering off near his navel. Another bisects it in what surely would have been a killing strike to the stomach, if he were entirely human. At least ten or so more, but smaller, or not as bad. A happy trail starts just under his belly button, and trails down to his-

Jaskier looks away, dunking under the surface once again to rinse the soap from his hair, and to scrub the rest from his face. When he sits up again, Lambert is standing right next to him, the only thing between them being the cool water of the stream. Water drips and beads across his skin. A smear of stubborn red has yet to be dislodged from a particular spot on his shoulder where the blood had dried on the trek here.

“Does that make you uncomfortable,” Lambert asks. “Hiring a whore before the winter sets off in earnest?”

“Well, I-”

“No pretenses,” Lambert moves closer, utilizing his inch or two of height to his advantage as he peers down at Jaskier. “You smell like lust. You’ve been reeking of it ever since the ambush. It lingers on you like fear would for anyone else who dared to be so close to a witcher. So, quite simply: want to do something about it?”

Yes.

But Jaskier knows better than to think with his dick, and so pauses, and remembering the conversation he’d had with Geralt just the night prior, thinks to ask, ”Won’t Geralt be able to tell?”

Something like amusement flicks across Lambert’s face; an emotion that moves so quick Jaskier is hardly sure of what it is, or what it’s directed at.

“You haven’t dropped the soap,” He says, plucking it and his rag from Jaskier’s limp fingers. He tosses it over his shoulder where it lands somewhere on the stones lining the river. “You can get clean again right after.” That smirk again, as if he knows just how many of Jaskier’s standards he’s hitting. He probably does, “ _ And _ I can be discreet.”

There’s a tiny little part in the back of Jaskier’s mind that begs him to reconsider, that asks him to remember the aching gap in his heart, to think of how much it’ll hurt to have that hole enlarged any further; a bigger part (much bigger) perks up with immediate interest. 

“Discreet.” Jaskier agrees, eyes flicking down to where the water meets Lambert’s waist. “Yes.”

Lambert makes a noise; something between a snort and a genuine laugh, and kisses him. There’s stubble on his chin, and a faint scent of iron, strong enough that even Jaskier can smell it. Lambert has mass on him, and experience, but as Jaskier tilts his head, breathing in sharply as his callused hands push him backwards until his back meets the raised wall of the other side of the riverbank, he finds that it doesn’t matter all that much. A low moan escapes his throat like a dog finally unchained, and the sound of it makes Lambert’s cock engorge like the world’s most expensive aphrodisiac. 

He’s enthusiastic, and for Lambert, that appears to be more than enough. 

He pulls back, one hand maneuvering Jaskier’s arms above his head in an unbreakable hold, as he turns his attention to his bared neck. Jaskier’s been at half mast for the past half hour; an arrangement he’d hoped was hidden by the gore, and suppressed by the chill. At the slightest attention, the simmering burn in the pit of his stomach has been stoked into a full fire; Jaskier feels hot enough to burn.

Discreet. Right. Discreet means fast. Discreet means mouths and hands and rutting.

“Let me touch you,” Jaskier’s voice is low, quiet. If it were anyone else, he might worry that his words were drowned out by the sound of the brook. But not here. And not with him. “ _ Please _ . I want to touch you.”

Lambert’s grip lessens as he allows Jaskier to pull him closer, one hand lingering on the witcher’s waist as the other traces a path downwards towards his crotch.

“You’re so beautiful,” Jaskier babbles as Lambert growls against his throat. He feels the warmth of Lambert’s tongue, the dance of his fingertips as he ruts against Jaskier’s cock, and finally, grips them together. Jaskier doesn’t feel the need to move, and instead appreciates the sharp teeth pressed into his shoulder, and the warmth of his skin against his own. “Do you know that? Your eyes are- oh! And your shoulders…Harder!” 

Jaskier writhes uselessly beneath him, one hand running through Lambert’s hair, as he other presses against his chest, learning by touch where his nipples are and where the grain of his hair goes. 

Jaskier holds his wrist still, and he stops, instantly, though it’s obvious that Jaskier does not have the strength to stop him by force. 

“Let me.” He murmurs, as he slides to his knees. The water which came up to his waist is shallower here, and laps gently against his mid chest. He places his hands on Lambert’s thighs, and licks a stipe up the underside of his dick before pulling back and taking it in his mouth properly. 

Jaskier knows how he likes it; he knows how the men he’d quietly rendezvous’d with during the summer liked it. He’s a quick learner, and quickly figures out that changing the rhythm works; pausing to run his tongue over the tip of Lambert’s cock, or to massage his balls will make him stutter, halting in his ministrations as he struggles to recover. Now he knows how Lambert likes it. 

Lambert’s fingers dig into his shoulder as he tenses, finally spilling over into Jaskier’s waiting mouth.

Jaskier’s still at attention, and while the predators glint in his eyes has lessened, Lambert is not finished.

He wipes away a stray rope from Jaskier’s chin, and then lifting him upwards, kisses him again. As his teeth tests Jaskier’s bottom lip, tongue pressing assuredly into his mouth, that hand, that callused hand begins it’s rhythm once more. It only takes a few twists of his fist for Jaskier to come, a low keening cry slipping from his throat as his seed spills against Lambert’s stomach.

Jaskier’s legs are like jelly, and he’s thankful that Lambert keeps him upright until his soul returns to his body. Lambert steps back. Jaskier remembers just how cold the water is, as his feet begin to feel numb. When he opens his eyes again, Lambert is holding out the soap and rag, as if it were no big deal at all, they get back to washing. 

They stumble back to the road a half hour later, where Geralt is waiting with Jaskier’s horse in tow, arms crossed as if the half hour they spent getting clean was the most unbearable wait of his life. Jaskier’s freshly washed doublet and trousers are in one hand, and his coat, the fur still stiff with blood, hangs open above his borrowed clothes. Geralt’s eye flick down to the shirt, a simplified version of his wolf medallion embroidered on the breast, and grunts. He leads Jaskier’s horse to him, handing over the reins wordlessly before climbing back into Roach’s saddle.

“Thank you for finding her,”Jaskier says as he ties his wet garments to his saddlebags. “You’ll have to teach me how to make her come back at a mere whistle. Would’ve saved you some time in looking for her.”

Geralt grunts. 

“Still in a mood, are we?” Lambert says, as he adjusts his gambeson to cover the hickey already fading on his collarbone. He gives his horse a pat before climbing on. 

Jaskier snorts, and follows suit. The sun is starting to set, hanging low in the sky like a fruit ready for picking. The promise of winter has become a guarantee, and with it, the green of the world around them has dulled, and grown faded. The forest does not have the bright warmth of summer, but the fading browns and oranges of autumn mixed within the evergreens. As they travel ever higher up the mountain, the air grows thinner and crueler, biting with every inward breath, and the colors slowly but surely fade to a singular matte green. 

Jaskier’s throat is hurting so badly by the time that they make camp that he doesn’t even bother to cheer at being allowed to stop. Geralt deems a cave, set far enough back from the road to have a fire without calling undue attention, to be a good enough place to rest for the evening. While Geralt and Lambert seem perfectly fine, as if marching through the night would be a perfectly plausible continuation of the day, Jaskier is beat. Exhaustion has slowly seeped into his bones as the adrenaline from the ambush slowly leached out of him, and he can barely force himself to slide down from the saddle, let alone keep up his usual banter. 

As he passes by Geralt, bedroll underarm, the witcher stops abruptly, his lips curling back into a grimace. He starts the fire with a flick of his fingers, and then hooks a finger under the collar of his coat. 

“Your arm is still bleeding. Didn’t you bandage it?”

Jaskier tosses his bedroll onto the floor and shrugs. He must have forgotten to fix it up after fucking with Lambert. Geralt had kept his distance during the ride after, and with his mind preoccupied with the cold, he’d hardly noticed the pain.

“It’s just a scratch.”

“Just a fuckin’ scratch,” Geralt mutters, pulling the borrowed shirt from where it clings to the wound. Jaskier doesn’t wince, and is very proud of his restraint, as Geralt half-leads, mostly drags him over to his bag. He doesn’t have much use for bandages or normal people healing serums all that much, but he’s begun to carry some minimal supplies for Jaskier’s sake. He pulls out some now, keeping an eye on Jaskier all the while, as if afraid he’ll slink off and die somewhere out of eyesight if he doesn’t. “And yet you insist on bandaging every scrape and mark upon my skin, as if each were life threatening. Just a fuckin’ scratch.”

Jaskier pulls his coat off, and tugs the borrowed tunic over his head. Okay,” The cut is bleeding, and red smears around it where it dried and sealed earlier. He’d barely looked at it before, even during his bath, but it’s obvious now how wide it is, and how prone it is to getting infection. “Fine. It’s not just a scratch. But I’m fine.”

“See?” Lambert drawls. “Perfectly fine. Turns out the bard isn’t a damsel after all.”

Geralt doesn’t comment. He merely bandages his wound, tight enough that it feels uncomfortable to move his arm in any way that flexes his bicep, and tosses Lambert’s shirt in his general direction. He catches it mid air, and sets it aside. 

“I’m clean,” Jaskier says, pulling on one of his own shirts. “And no longer bleeding. I could be the happiest man in the world, if there ever was one. Only thing that could make me happier would be a real bed.”

“You’ll get that soon enough.” Lambert says, as he frees his steel sword from its scabbard, and begins to clean it. Blood falls off in thin flakes, and the metal behind his rag begins to gleam like it should. “You can suffer through a few more nights on a bedroll.”

“Of course I can,” Jaskier sniffs. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t complain about it. How else are you going to learn manners? It’s undignified to sleep in the mud all of the time.”

“Hmmph.” Geralt passes Jaskier some dried meat and a flask, but Jaskier shakes his head. He’s not hungry. 

His throat hurts, and for all his complaints, he hadn’t really said a thing about the discomfort brewing in his lungs, or the chill that still remains beneath his skin. Likely just a cold. Nothing to be overly concerned about, but if he is going to get ill, he’d prefer not to vomit. Besides being an unpleasant experience, it’s one that he won’t be able to hide from Geralt, or Lambert. 

Jaskier’s already forced them to take a more dangerous route; he doesn’t want to be even more of an inconvenience by making them take even longer to reach their destination. 

“I’m not too prideful to ask,” Jaskier sets out his bedroll, and slides his coat back on to lessen the cold. “Geralt?” He gestures at the arrangement, half expecting him to deny him. 

Geralt’s been pissy for most of the day. It could’ve been because of the night before, or something he’d done today. Jaskier is not sure what he did, but it’s a surprise nonetheless when he chugs down most of the flash, sticks a strip of dried meat between his teeth, and slips between the blanket, curving himself against Jaskier’s backside. The warmth he provides is enough to make the trembling stop, and within a few moments, Jaskier succumbs to the exhaustion lingering in his bones. 

All would’ve been well and dandy if he hadn’t woken the next morning with a fever hot enough to cook an egg. 


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there! 
> 
> Sorry it took so long to update! You might have noticed that the chapter count is a hell of a lot longer. Well, I realized somewhat belatedly that I had spent four chapters just going up the mountain, and this fic is supposed to cover nearly 20 years of content. So uh, with my track record, I need way more time to flesh out everything I plan to cover. So take that as you will.
> 
> I had summer classes and work, and then I got stumped on where to go next. As a result, the format's a bit different, and it's somewhat shorter than I prefer. Hopefully finals go quickly next week, and I'll be able to proceed with the next chapter. I kind of broke my own rule about single POV's, but I remember at least one person asking for another chapter from Geralt, so I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Please remember to read, and review!

The cave might have been dark to anyone else, with the embers burning low, and the moon outside hidden behind the ridges of the mountain, but to Geralt, it was as bright as an evening sunset in an open field. The fire had mostly been for Jaskier’s benefit, as neither her not Lambert truly required the light or heat. It was nice, though neither would likely admit it aloud. Jaskier had gone straight for the bedroll, declining dinner in an uncharacteristic way. Geralt is sure the violence of the day is to blame; combined with the harsh pace they’ve taken over the past few weeks as they rushed to beat the winter snows. Still, he thinks, it is rather odd. 

“You’re soft for him,” Lambert says, when Jaskier’s breathing finally evens out, and settles into gentle snoring. His steel sword gleams with a thin coating of oil. Nothing special, nothing beyond the usual used to keep steel from rusting. Still, the scent of it mixes oddly with the remnants of Jaskier still clinging to his fingertips. It makes his nose itch. “I can see why, though he’s a fool to be soft for your sorry arse.”

Geralt cannot do much in the way of rebuttal when he is curled around the bard, pressed close together like spoons in a drawer underneath a shared blanket. They fit together nicely, easily; it reminds him of the discordant remnants of the night prior. The booze. The proposition. The denial. Geralt is not one overly skilled with words or poetry, and that is why the resulting emotions confuse him so heartily. He felt disappointed that Jaskier had denied him. He felt upset. He doesn’t understand why smelling Lambert on him like smoke lingering from a burned pot annoys him, or why that annoyance gets under his skin like a pair of clothes a size too small.

“Fuck you.”

Lambert slides his sword back into its scabbard, pulls the silver one free, and sets to work rubbing it’s length. Flakes of dried blood flick off with almost imperceptible clicks as they hit the walls of the cave, or the stone floor below. 

“No, thanks.” Lambert replies conversationally, as if Geralt had merely offered him a drink not to his taste. “You could try fucking  _ him.  _ Think he’d appreciate it a bit more.” At Geralt’s questioning gaze, he sets his sword down, eyebrow raised in exaggerated confoundment. “He’s in love with you. What? You couldn’t tell? It’s as obvious as that white hair of yours.” 

“He falls in love constantly. I’m not special.”

Lambert snorts. 

“Ah, so he’s gotten fancy brands for everyone of ‘em? Did I miss ‘em in the river today? Because I did get a pretty good view, and I didn’t see a damn thing but the wolf on the back of his hand.”

Geralt was intending on waiting until they reached the keep to broach the subject of the brands once more. Jaskier, despite talking enough for the both of them, refuses to speak of it; just like refuses to speak about that night in the woods. Trauma, perhaps. It’s common to not want to talk about bad things that have happened. Of all the people in the world, Witchers know this fact best, as they avoid half of the keep every winter, as if disturbing those rooms will bring back the physical manifestations of their childhoods. 

Still, it needs to be spoken about. 

“Jaskier died, early this summer.” Geralt says. Instinctively, his arm rests a little heavier over Jaskier’s midriff, as if to confirm that he is indeed still there, alive and well. “In an altercation that he shouldn’t have been involved in.”

Lambert stills. He is a collection of restless energy forced into the confines of human flesh; has been since he was a brat running the walls of the keep. He does not still for long, or very often. Something about Jaskier has interested him, more so than a simple desire to best Geralt would cause. 

“Necromancy?”

“He wasn’t completely dead. Whatever Triss did, she saved him, and those marks- We don’t know. He won’t talk about it and we don’t know what they mean.”

“So what is he to you?” Lambert says, avoiding the obvious question. Already, his fingers have begun to dance, tapping across the hilt of his sword with restless energy that belies his curiosity. “A friend? A lover?”

“He is-” Geralt pauses, unsure of what exactly to say. He’s what, exactly? Not a friend, though they have a friendship; not a lover, though Geralt can imagine himself all too clearly applying focused ministrations to his sweat slicked skin, reaching through his chest hair to trace a path to his happy trail and his- But Geralt does not love him. He cannot love him, just as surely as he cannot fly.

But what is he to Geralt? 

He’s been silent far too long.

Lambert smirks. 

He picks up his rag and oil once more, and resumes polishing his sword. “You ought to decide soon,” Lambert says. “For I could bear to call him a lover, and could do so sooner than you could call him a friend.”

“Why?”

“Why, what?”

They pause as Jaskier shifts, snoring slightly. His forehead is slicked with a thin layer of sweat that plasters his hair to his skin in thick, brown clumps. Geralt’s hand twitches.

Geralt adjusts how he lays, head cocked over Jaskier’s shoulder in a way that he recognizes as intimate, and meets Lambert’s gaze. “Why do you want him? Is it because of me? Because of-”

“Because I think he’s interesting, dumbass.” His voice carries an edge as sharp as a blade; like a wolf baring his teeth, or so Vesemir had noted one year, while watching Eskel and Lambert trade barbs. “Not everything revolved around you. He’s not afraid, he’s not here for a cheap thrill. Hell, I’d think something was wrong with him if he hadn’t been phased by the ambush. No one else ever sticks around, and here you are, climbing up a mountain of death with him trailing behind like it’s a walk by the sea.” Lambert laughs. The noise is like a dog barking. “I’m not going to stop because of you.”

Geralt understands. He understands that this is a challenge, that this is a fight, and that he is not sure, exactly, why it’s riling him up so much. So he accepts.

Geralt nods slightly, and then, though he doesn’t need it, closes his eyes, and sets to falling asleep.

Lambert scoffs, mutters, “Soft,” Under his breath once more, and heads outside to stand guard. 

So be it. Geralt may not need the sleep, but it feels plenty nice nonetheless; Lambert can stand out in the cold all he wants, while he enjoys the warmth.

The morning comes far too quickly. Geralt doesn’t remember falling asleep, or what he dreamed, but when he wakes, the gaping hole where his dreams should have been throbs faintly. 

Jaskier is still asleep. Something thick and cloying sticks to his skin, and even as Geralt lifts the blanket, and slides out onto the cold earth, he does not stir. 

After he has dressed, his swords and armor a familiar weight against his skin, he shakes Jaskier’s shoulder in an effort to wake him. The snores halt. Jaskier rolls onto his back and give Geralt what might be a glare. Geralt is unsure. With how his hair flops into his eyes, and his mouth screws up into a line of displeasure, one might assume he was upset; and yet as he meets Geralt’s inquisitive gaze, he says quite cheerfully, “Splendid morning to climb an annoyingly desolate mountain, isn’t it?”

“We’re not far.” 

“So you’ve said. One last town before we hit sheer wilderness.” Jaskier pauses to cough as he sits up, and starts to pack up his bedroll. The routine is familiar; Geralt knows it nearly as well as he knows his own. He’ll pack up his things, take a drink of water, and chew on dried mint as he combs through his hair, and if need be, changes clothes. “Should probably buy more parchment, if they have any. And perhaps a different gift.”

“Doubt they’ll have any. Vesemir might have some you can use.”

When did he learn that? Why does he know it so well?

Jaskier coughs again, smothering the sound in the crease of his elbow as he reaches for his waterskin. His fingers graze the container once, twice. Geralt shoves it a little closer with his boot. Jaskier’s fingers make contact with it, shaking slightly as he brings it to his mouth. 

“Still need a gift.”

“You don’t need that. Anything he has use for is already there, and has been for decades before you were born.”

Jaskier fixes him with a look from beneath the curled edges of his hair. It only curls like that when it’s wet. “I don’t have the time to explain all of the etiquette someone neglected to teach you. So yes, I do. I’ll be dressed and ready in a moment. Why don’t you go bother Lambert for a while?”

Geralt shrugs, and leaves him to it. 


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am finishing my summer classes this weekend! So I finally have time to work on this and,,, the zine which I'm currently heading. The name is Dandelion wine, and its hosted on Tumblr, if you're interested In learning more. Thank you so much for commenting!

Jaskier wakes in an unfamiliar bed. This in and of itself is not overly surprising, given his predilection for sleeping around, though that has become less common as of late. The bedcovers are clean but patched in places; the stitches even, and neat. Thin light streams through the high window, brightening the room to a degree that finally jostles Jaskier free from the remaining vestiges of sleep. He sits up, wincing as his bare feet touch the chilled stone floor. His shirt bunches oddly in places, hanging off his shoulders, and falling slightly too long. It is as he walks towards the window, clutching at his trousers to keep them from falling, that he realizes: His clothes are not his own.

Jaskier’s wearing Geralt’s shirt. He knows, because as he adjusts the collar, his fingers graze the tear he’d stitched a month prior. So he’s with Geralt, he’d presume, and he was likely also the person to undress him. His head is somewhat clouded, though not from drink. Jaskier peers out the window, but can’t see much. He’s an inch or so too short to see over the ledge, and though there is enough of an inward ledge to grab onto and pull himself up, he recognizes that he hasn’t eaten in a while, and as such, it’s not a good idea to do so. 

This has to be Kaer Morhen. The last thing he remembers is falling asleep in the cave, Geralt wrapped around him. Even his bulk had not been enough to ward off the unnatural chill, and he remembered sleeping restlessly, and then….

_The morning had brought with it a chill even worse than the day before; without a Geralt pressed against him to share his body heat, the thin layer of sweat became a dampness that pulled the wind close to his skin. Jaskier doesn’t complain. They are almost there, or so geralt has told him, and he can stand a little cold long enough to get to their destination._

_Geralt stands over him, waiting for some sign of him being awake. Jaskier schools his face into mimicking his usual jovial expression, and says, “Splendid morning to climb an annoyingly desolate mountain, isn’t it?”_

_“We’re not far.” Geralt says. Just as Jaskier had thought. No point in kicking up a fuss then, as he can certainly wait until they’ve reached a place with beds, wine, and warmth._

_“So you’ve said. One last town before we hit sheer wilderness.” Jaskier turns abruptly to smother a cough in the corner of his elbow. He can feel the phlegm catch in his throat, and bides his time to recover by packing up his things. When his throat is clear enough to speak, he continues, “Should probably buy more parchment, if they have any. And perhaps a different gift.”_

_Geralt lingers, still. On any other day, Jaskier might have felt something like contentment at the knowledge that Geralt would wait for him. Today he feels annoyed, as Geralt retorts, “Doubt they’ll have any. Vesemir might have some you can use.”_

_Jaskier coughs again, smothering the sound in the crease of his elbow as he reaches for his waterskin. His fingers graze the container once, twice. Geralt shoves it a little closer with his boot. Jaskier’s fingers make contact with it, shaking slightly as he brings it to his mouth. He hopes that Geralt mistakes the tremble in his for something other than illness._

_“Still need a gift.” Jaskier presses on._

_“You don’t need that. Anything he has use for is already there, and has been for decades before you were born.”_

_Jaskier fixes him with a look that he hopes conveys the exact nature of his annoyance. It’s good manners, for gods’ sake. Title or not, he’s still a Lettonhove, and the etiquette of his title has been worked into him like oil into leather. “I don’t have the time to explain all of the etiquette someone neglected to teach you. So yes, I do. I’ll be dressed and ready in a moment. Why don’t you go bother Lambert for a while?”_

_Geralt pauses, apparently not catching on to the snap in Jaskier’s voice, and then leaves, apparently off to do just that._

_Jaskier holds his breath and counts to ten, before falling into another coughing spree, mouth pressed against his bedroll to silence it._

Ah yes. He’d thought he’d be fine. Nevermind that Jaskier had only ever been sick a few times, enough to count on one hand. Jaskier pulls a rope down from where it hangs abandoned on the inside of an open wardrobe, and ties his borrowed pants. By the foot of the bed lies a collection of his things; the satchel with his journals, his lute case, and folded in a neat pile beside them are his clothes. Jaskier ignores most of it. He can smell the sick wafting from his own skin, the stale sweat sinking into the sheets below, and knows that he needs a bath. His own clothes can wait until then.

He heads out into the hallway, which is similarly desolate, and still utterly full. Kaer Morhen is the opposite of the manner Jaskier had grown up in. Whereas Lettenhove had been like a painting, frozen in time and never changing; forced to be perfect in a way that left it feeling empty and hollow. The Keep may be empty, and falling into ruin in places, but the life that had once filled it’s halls still remains, making it feel lonely for their absence. As he walks down the spiraling staircase from what once must have been a dormitory, he lets his fingers trail against the stone walls, feeling the chips and divots in the stone as he passes by. 

Once on the floor below, he notices a window, the glass within it shattered, and despite the chill coming from outside, Jaskier can’t resist. Crossing his arms across his chest, he leans through, carefully avoiding the remaining jagged edges as he peers at the courtyard below. 

Geralt’s bright hair makes him easy to identify, and Lambert’s jackassery is easily seen through his posture and pace. But there’s another man watching the two of them spar, arms crossed as he flicks his fingers in their direction, occasionally sending a wave of fire, or burst of air their way. It disrupts their violent dance, but there’s a familiarity in their recovery. This is an exercise that they’ve done many times before.

_“You don’t look well,” Geralt observes as they breach the final town. The market is small, just as Jaskier had expected, but as their horses walk through, he spots a few things to his liking. It’ll be the last of his remaining coin, minus the small fund he’d put aside for the following spring, but he figures it’s worth the splurge. “Jaskier. Did you hear me?”_

_A sense of dread, somehow both far too heavy, and hint too removed, looms from somewhere within him. It is not his. Jaskier is sure of it now. These feelings that he’s been having ever since his death- they are not his own. Jaskier thinks he knows where they come from, but he refuses to think too hard on it. Why give himself heartbreak worse than what he will already endure? Why give himself hope when there is none to be had?_

_“I’m fine,” Jaskier says. The flush in his skin is one that he can claim to be from exertion, or the thin air. At least, he is no longer sweating. Even with the layers of clothing and the thick, now dry coat, he finds himself slightly chilled. “Do you think he would appreciate a good luck charm? If I remember correctly, that’s a sigil for a safe home.”_

_“It’s a knick-knack,” Lambert calls, as he surveys a length of jerky hanging from an old woman’s stall. She does not seem to mind the cold as bundled as she is in lengths of fur and various draperies. “And that sign means ‘Drunken bastard’ in the Elder Tongue.”_

_Jaskier sticks out his tongue. As he moves to disembark from his horse, a wave of lightheadedness leaves him shaking once more. He only just catches himself on the saddle of his horse, and though he knows that his hesitation is acutely visible, he knows that his only other option is to step forward and fall._

_Shakily, he huffs,”Yes, but he doesn’t have to know that I know that.”_

_Lambert hands over a coin to the old woman, who slowly plucks the meat, and begins to wrap it in waxed parchment. He doesn’t seem to notice the shift in Jaskier’s voice. Instead, he laughs. “That’s a fine point. Should’ve said that when I first started cursing. ‘Oy, Vesemir, I dunno what ‘shite’ or ‘cunt’ means. I thought it was a compliment. Aren’t I such a nice boy?’.”_

_Jaskier snorts._

_Geralt is silent. Jaskier hopes that the charade will last._

A harsh wind blows towards the keep, though those below don’t seem to notice it. Jaskier starts to straighten up. A firm hand halts the movement as another points at the shard of glass sticking haphazardly from the frame.

“Careful.” He says, as Jaskier more carefully extricates himself from the window. Vesemir, Jaskier presumes, waits for him to step away before glancing down below. “They’ve gotten lazy. Bah,” His eyes latch onto Jaskier; his gaze reminds him of one of his professors from Oxenfurt, wry and inquisitive, and in his own words, ‘far too old for this shit’. “I’ll sweat it out of them later.”

He starts off down the hall, pausing after a moment to call behind him, “Well? You want breakfast, don’t you?”

Jaskier scurries to catch up, his body aching at the exertion after spending so long in bed. Vesemir leads him down winding halls, and through great looming rooms that must have once served as classrooms, though much of the furniture has been destroyed or moved, leaving the rooms bare and echoing. Jaskier wonders how it will refract his music, how it will wrap around the notes like a lingering embrace, and then picks up his pace to catch up.

“I don’t remember coming here.” 

“You wouldn’t. Geralt brought you here unconscious on Roach’s saddle.” Before Jaskier can ask if he means in Geralt’s arms, or less embarrassingly, on the saddle alone, he continues, “You were drooling.”

Vesemir must be aware of Jaskier’s lack of energy. There’s not much he can do about the matter; despite trying to force himself to move faster, he simply does not have the energy to do so. He’s been asleep for who knows how long, and he hadn’t eaten for days prior to falling ill in a stupid attempt to avoid nausea. No one could ever accuse him of being a medical student, he supposes. 

“Oh.” Jaskier rubs the back of his head. “I didn’t think I was that sick.”

“I’ve treated worse. You lived.”

When they finally cross the threshold of the kitchen, a wave of warm air greets him. The feeling is so welcome that Jaskier can hardly help the shaking in his legs as he clambers for a chair. He’s starving in a way he never thought he could be starving; ravenous like something born purely to consume.

Politely, he clears his throat. “I’m sorry. I would offer to help, but I’m a bit lightheaded.”

“No need for all of that tomfoolery,” Vesemir says as he stoops over the stove. “There’s no one to impress here but a tired old man.” 

He grabs the kettle, pours the hot water into an earthenware teapot, and then sets it on the table. He serves the food on two matching plates, both chipped, and sets them down as well. 

“You don’t seem that old to me.” And it’s true. Most people have worn themselves thin and cracked by the time they reach fifty, if they are so lucky. Their years of working and hardship settle like oil on water, more visible upon their creaking, crooked bodies than any other aspect of the life they’ve lived.

“Then how would you describe me, poet? I am far older than anyone else you’ve ever come across.” 

“Wise.” Jaskier says, after a moment of consideration. “You seem wise.”

“Ha!” Outside, steel meets steel, and echoes far into the air like smoke from a campfire. “That’s an interesting one, poet. Would you like some advice, from a wise old man?” Without waiting for a reply, he continues, “It’s foolish to fall in love with a witcher,’’ Vesemir pours tea into a chipped wooden cup. The smell of it is sharp and bitter, and promises Jaskier the sort of warmth he’s grown used to not feeling. Today, the coolness lingers in his fingertips and in his chest in a way far more mundane than the chill of death; and for that he is grateful. The smell of it is so overpowering that he almost doesn’t hear Vesemir’s next words. “But you are not the first.”

Vesemir places the cup down in front of Jaskier with a quiet thump, and takes his seat on the other side of the table. 

“Why is it foolish?” Jaskier asks stubbornly. “It’s not as if it’s any worse than any other kind of heartbreak.”

“Foolish for a human to walk a path that’s not their own. Witcher’s never die in their beds, and if you continue following after him like a lost pup, you’ll have much the same fate. But you know that, don’t you?” The old man cleanly slices a thick cut of chicken, and spears it with his fork. He looks up as he raises it towards his mouth, eyebrow lifted. “So why?”

The question is a complicated one, despite its brevity. It’s a trick, Jaskier knows, a simple one used to get a person to reveal more about themselves than they would normally. Their answer would not only provide information on the subject, but would alert the other as to the question they thought they were being asked, which could be much more revealing. 

Jaskier takes a sip of his drink, a long one that leaves him almost breathless when he sets the cup down once more. 

“I want to be remembered,” He admits. The chill has left his frame, and now he’s only the regular sort of cold, the kind that comes with being in a large, drafty old building, and can be warded off by a good coat and warm boots. “I want someone to care about me after I’m gone, and I want Geralt-” The statement applies, even half finished. “I want him to be remembered too. I want people to know him for the kind man he is, instead of the monster they paint him to be.”

Vesemir studies his face for a moment, and then seeming to come to a decision, leans into the cracked and chipped wooden chair, and takes a long sip of his own drink. “You can help with the fixings once you’re feeling better. The library can use organizing. The cellars need cleaning. There’s no place for sloth here.”

“I can do that,” Jaskier agrees, his cheeks full of meat and sauce. “I’d love to help.”

“And then,” Vesemir says, “We can determine what that mark means.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really super tired of staring at the word doc. So,,, please accept this humble offering so we can finally finish the Kaer Morhen Arc and get to 1. more smut, and 2. more angst. Please remember to read and review.

“There is no name for it, rare as it is, but I’ve seen one before, years ago,” Vesemir says as they walk. The tour is slow and rambling, as Jaskier is still having trouble breathing, and thus can’t handle prolonged exertion, but he finds it informative nonetheless. There’s little here that he’ll truly have use for besides the kitchen, the library and the hot springs, but he can see the stories straining within the keep’s walls. He wants to ask questions, though he knows he shouldn’t. “Not a tattoo or a brand, though he tried to claim it was. Later, he said that he’d made a deal for his lover, and that she’d had one as well.” 

“But that’s not what happened,” Jaskier protests. Though the courtyard is far behind, on the opposite side of the keep, and far enough away that even a witcher could not hope to overhear their conversation, his cheeks warm at the thought of being mistaken as Geralt’s lover. “I died, and his mage friend brought me back. If anything, that was a favor, or- or a gift. And we’re not-”

“Irrelevant,” Vesemir guides them to a spiraling staircase, and pauses, asking imperceptibly if he can handle it. Jaskier nods, and trailing a hand on the stone wall beside them follows after as they begin the climb. “There are similarities. Your marks were both put there unnaturally, and in the last case, it led to him finding that woman over and over again, far more than luck would normally decree, until her death some years later. Whatever it was he had done, it tied them together. It was a fate that he chose, but one she did not.”

“I’d choose Geralt.”

“Aye, and I hope that will make the difference. Whatever that means, I’m sure you’ll determine. The point I wish to make, is that mark denotes a connection. I cannot say what exactly that will mean for the two of you, but you should be aware of it.” They are halfway up the tower now. The few windows are small, and let in a draft that makes Jaskier’s throat ache. A gentle, pale light casts Vesemir’s profile in a pallor close to that of a corpse. He wonders how it looks against his own sickly pale skin. “Destiny does not take kindly to those who struggle against her.”

“I don’t mean to be rude,” Jaskier breathes the words out between sharp, biting inhalations, and is glad that it’s not commented on. “But that was not very helpful. Interesting- I could see a ballad or a drinking song perhaps borne from that little tale-, but I have no idea what to do with that information.”

“It means what you make of it.” Vesemir says as he lifts the trap door, and steps out onto the roof. “Do with that as you will.”

Jaskier pulls his coat tighter around him, glad that he had taken a bath and chosen to dress warmly after their meal, and follows behind. The view is beautiful. Below, the mountain is covered in a dusting of snow that hangs thick and heavy off of the trees. The pass they had traveled to get here is small, and hardly noticeable amongst the snowfall. But even that is far off. All around them is wilderness; stark green trees, and long expanses of grey stone and shale. 

“We’re friends.” Jaskier says firmly. The wind howls like wolves at the door, like shrieks of wraiths over an open grave. His fingers shake with the chill, as he clutches the hood of his coat closer over his ears. “I’m happy to just be his friend.”

It’s a lie. It’s a painful, biting lie, just like the one he’d told himself after turning Geralt down; it is, of course, one for his own benefit. Better to have Geralt in his life however he can have him, rather than not at all. Except, standing here among the ruins of his home, it’s obvious that Geralt feels something for him. If they don’t confront it, the knowledge that Jaskier wants, and Geralt- well, he must feel something, given that he’s tied them together- then they’re both idiots. 

Vesemir doesn’t say anything. He peers at the landscape down below for a moment more, and then turns back. “They should be done with training by now. It’s about time you met Eskel anyhow.”

As it turns out, by the time they make their way back to the kitchens, the three witchers have already raided what was left of Vesemir’s breakfast preparations, and are mid-way into a game of Gwent that Lambert seems to be losing. As Jaskier pours himself another cup of tea, Geralt glances up, and nods, as if satisfied by Jaskier’s admittedly subpar appearance. 

“You’re not dead.” Geralt observes, as Lambert squints at his hand. Jaskier peers over his shoulder to note several ranged combat cards. With Geralt’s fog currently affecting both, it leaves him at a distinct disadvantage. “You should’ve said that you were sick.”

“You said we weren’t far, and I’m not dead,” Jaskier repeats as he leans over Lambert’s shoulder. There’s an obvious disadvantage, but if he can last until the next round, Geralt will have to avoid any weather disruptions lest he ruin his own strategy of saving those cards for the next round. But Jaskier knows that saying anything will likely only rile Lambert up, so he straightens up, and takes a seat at the table to watch. “Besides, can you imagine getting stuck out there with me in the midst of all that snow? I would’ve been insufferable.”

“Like dragging you up the mountain unconscious was any better?” Lambert snorts. “It’s almost like you enjoy being a damsel in distress.”

“Just as you enjoy losing at Gwent,” Jaskier takes a long drink, wallowing in the warmth as it spreads from his stomach and up to his chest. Lambert slams down an additional ranged fighter as Geralt uses his leader’s ability, winning the round so absolutely that Lambert doesn’t even bother to try another turn. “Though I make a much prettier sight at it than you.”

“Fuck you,” Lambert snarls as he sweeps his cards to the side. “I’m rusty.”

“And lil’ bleater can fly.” The man whom Jaskier assumes is Eskel snorts, and crosses his arms. There’s a thick scar across his face, but it does little to detract from the roguish charm evident in the angles of his face, and the gleam in his eyes. “You must be looking forward to being relieved of all your coin, with that attitude.”

Lambert makes a rude gesture without looking up from the game as Geralt places down a starting card. “Piss. Off.”

Eskel doesn’t seem to notice. As if he’d lost interest, he turns suddenly and directs his languid gaze onto Jaskier. The way he looks at him is familiar; all three of the witchers have a gaze that is far too intent for a casual conversation. Jaskier doesn’t look away as Eskel tilts his head and says, “So you’re the bard?”

“Apparently, my reputation precedes me. It’s ‘Jaskier’ to my friends.”

“Eskel.” He turns back to the card game just in time to see Lambert’s loss. He seems comfortable with silence, just as comfortably as he is with noise. “Do you know how to play?”

“I’m better at darts,” Jaskier admits, “And I prefer games that rely more on skill than luck. It’s more than entertaining to just watch someone else as they lose everything.”

“It’s one game.” Lambert protests. “S’not like I’ve lost the whole damn season.”

“Yet.” Geralt grins, placing down a card that doubles his numbers. A win, impossible to counteract.

“Fucker-” As Lambert launches across the table, Eskel shifts Jaskier backwards, out of reach of any errant limbs. Vesemir watches unimpressed from the stove for a moment or two before clearing his throat. The pair pauses, Geralt’s arm pinning down in the middle of Lambert’s taut back as he struggles to flip over. 

“I’ve made a list of what needs to be done. You’re more than welcome to kill each other after you’ve finished.” It’s comical, almost, how quickly the two disentangle. Geralt takes the offered paper, and reads over it, before passing it off to Lambert. His hair is scuffed, and sticks up oddly above his ears, and on the back of his head. The mischievous grin that still lingers on his face adds to his childish air. It’s oddly endearing, though Jaskier tries not to think too hard about it. 

“What about the bard?” Lambert asks, setting it down on the table.

Eskel picks it up, reads it quickly, then hands it back to Vesemir. “The library. Clerical work.”

“There’s plenty there to be done, and none of you have the patience for it.” Vesemir supplies. Unsaid is the obvious fact that Jaskier is simply not suited to physical labor. Even without the knowledge of his upbringing, it’s blatant from his stature, and chosen profession. While he’s sure that he can help with easy things, if given direction, it would likely be more of a detriment than a help, given his lack of experience, and the power differential between him and the others.

“I can help with other stuff too.” Jaskier supplies. “I don’t want to impose.”

“Unless you’re a secret stonemason, I doubt it.” Lambert says derisively. “Those fingers don’t seem suited for hard work.”

Before Jaskier can help himself, the perfect retort slips off of his tongue like dew from a blade of grass. “That’s not what you said when I-”

Lambert seethes, banging his fist upon the table so suddenly, it startles Jaskier into silence. _“Don’t you dare._ ”

“No, no,” Eskel laughs. “Do go on. What did you do?”

_Fucked your brother?_ Jaskier thinks. “Nothing,” He mutters, pulling his cup closer. _You have my silence only because I know saying it aloud is a horrible, no good, very bad idea, you ass._ He straightens up carefully, clutching his mug close as he draws himself to standing. “I think I’ll go back to bed for a while,” he says cheerfully. “And begin helping with those chores tomorrow. Could someone show me back to my room? I’m afraid I haven’t gotten the layout down quite yet.”

Geralt shoulders a glaring Lambert out of the way, and nods. “Come on.”

The walk is easier than Jaskier remembers, though that might be because he’s being led by someone who actually knows where they’re going. 

Jaskier is quiet, not because he has nothing to say, but because he’s trying to remember which doors Geralt names as his own, as Lambert’s, as Eskel’s. It is not, of course, because he’s been thinking on what Vesemir told him, or on how to phrase those resulting questions; that would be out of character

Geralt pauses in front of a worn, wooden door. There are deep gouges in the wood that might have come from an axe or a sword. Jaskier places a hand against it, not pushing, but feeling, and then looks up at Geralt, almost regretting what he has to say. “Your family is sweet.”

Geralt snorts. “Don’t let Vesemir hear you say that.”

“It’s true,” Jaskier insists, “And I’m just- I’m wondering. “I don’t mean to complain, because I am in fact, very honored that you chose to share this with me, but I have to know: Why did you bring me here?”

“Do you think that putting this into words makes it more real? Do I really have to say what sharing this,” He lifts his hand to gesture vaguely at the keep, at the battle worn door, and cold stone halls. “Means for it to matter to you?”

“Geralt,” Jaskier sighs, rubbing at his temples as if the movement would make this easier. This should be an uncomfortable conversation. Geralt seems to be actively refusing to let it become awkward, but that doesn’t make forming the words any easier. “I understand that you are a man of action, but I am one of words. If you don’t state your intent out loud, then I can and will determine a thousand different meanings for them, none of which will be accurate and that will serve no one.” 

Geralt goes quiet as Jaskier leans against the door of his borrowed room, shivering slightly as a draft picks up through the hall. Those feelings that are not his, that he can now safely presume to be Geralt’s are rolling and conflicting, like a storm breaking against a rocky shore. Jaskier can taste what must be affection, and anger, and fear.Slowly, Geralt says, “I wanted you to spend the winter with me.”

“Geralt, you were drunk, but you,” Jaskier pauses, unsure if he should ask, and then deciding to push forward anyways, goes on to say, “You came onto me. Do you mean that? You can hardly say that you’re my friend, but _you are mine_. I could never conceive of you casually. I’m not asking anything of you; nothing but this:” He takes a deep breath. “Don’t leave me. Don’t try to make me leave. Can you do that?” 

White hair, bedraggled, and damp with sweat, falls in Geralt’s face. Jaskier steps forward carefully, telegraphing each movement so that Geralt could stop him easily if he so wished. He reaches up, brushing his hair back from his eyes, and leans in close, close enough to smell the stale scent of exertion, and the meat from his breakfast on his breath. And then carefully, he kisses him. 

Geralt is still, and then suddenly, is not; a hand moves to grasp his waist, and another to cradle his chin. His gentleness is such a contrast to Lambert, and yet, fits him so terribly well. For all intents and purposes, the kiss is chaste; closed mouth, and kind, and yet sets Jaskier ablaze like a blast of igni on kindling. As they pull apart, his mind stalls like a tavern falling quiet after a particularly rousing performance, until finally he remembers to say, “Can you do that for me?”

“I can’t love you like a normal man.” Geralt says, his hand lingering on Jaskier’s waist even as he pulls away. “I’m _not_ a man. But I’ll keep you close, if that’s what you want. If you want to be by my side-”

_I love you, you idiot. I love you like I’ve never wanted to love anyone else before; like the burr I press deeper into my skin, I want you, however you’ll have me_. “I’m your friend,” Jaskier says with a fond smile. “Whether destiny decreed it or not, I would want to be with you.

“Okay,” Geralt says, something like a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. A warmth like the summer sun blooms in a heart that is not his own, and Jaskier relishes in it like a cat basking in the sun. “Okay.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I got laid off from work, college has been kicking my ass, and Nanowrimo is coming up. It is extremely unlikely that you'll hear from me again until December. I'm sorry that the chapter is a bit shorter than my usual, but there's a big arc coming up that I'm sure you all will enjoy. Don't forget to comment! If you are a student, and want an essay written or homework done, please check out lazy-student-helpline.company.site or @lazystudenthelpline on instagram.

Jaskier catches Lambert just before he leaves, already burdened with his armor once again, his swords in position behind him as familiar an outline as the horns on a buck. 

“You weren’t going to say farewell before you left.” It’s not a question. The only reason he’d realised that Lambert was gone was because Jaskier woke early to relieve himself, and caught a glimpse of his shadow through the window. It hurts, in an odd sort of way, that Lambert didn’t deem it worth it to see Jaskier before he left.

“The snow’s melting,” Lambert says in lieu of a defense. He fixes a pack of dried meat, and another of hardened cheese to his mount’s saddlebags, and then turns to face Jaskier head on. “I always leave early. My Path takes me the furthest out, to Skellige.”

“Yes, well,” Jaskier crosses his arms, feeling the cold acutely through the gaps in his unfastened coat, and across his stockinged feet. Somehow, he’d forgotten his shoes in his hurry to get downstairs, and he feels the mistake acutely as he fidgets from foot to foot on the frozen ground. “You could’ve said something. I’d like to think we’re friends now, or something skin to it. I’d rather our parting memory not be of you stumbling shit faced into-”

“Or you curling on Geralt’s lap like a cat?” Lambert teases. “Fine, fine. Next time I’ll cover my eyes, and pop my head in and whisper ‘I’m leaving now’ before galloping off into the night. Better?”

“You’re an arse.”

“And you’re a menace.” Lambert replies. “Is there something in particular you wanted to say, or did you just come out here to freeze and mouth off at me?”

Jaskier hesitates. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t have to say anything. He’s decently sure that Lambert is intelligent enough to understand the way things are, but he doesn’t want to leave it to chance. “I like you,” He says, and then realizing how that may be construed by someone without emotional intelligence, recants. “I mean, you’re my friend. I’m glad I met you. I know that that one time-”

“He’s my brother,” Lambert looks to the ground, avoiding Jaskier’s gaze. “But that doesn’t mean he won’t kick my ass if he finds out. It wasn’t serious. Just a fun time with a pretty bard.”

“Well, yes.” Jaskier smiles, pulling a small package from underneath his arm. He’d manage to grab it on his way out, but not his gloves. He presses it into Lambert’s arms, and gestures for him to open it. “But really, I just meant to embarrass you one more time before giving you this. I’m freezing my arse off, so I’m going back inside now.” Quickly, so that Lambert won’t try to duck out of it, he leans in and presses a gentle kiss to his cheek. “Don’t die.”

Lambert grumbles something that Jaskier doesn’t catch as he hurries back into the safety and warmth of the keep. 

Geralt leaves a few days later, with Eskel soon to follow in the next few weeks. As they leave the keep, Jaskier feels inexorably changed, and yet knows that when they reach civilization once more, he’ll have no choice but to revert to the way he’s always been; to the man he has always been. He loves Geralt, and Geralt feels something comparable to love for him. There’s a fear, of course, that this too will pass, but not really. Whatever binds them together only serves to be an extension of an earlier choice. Jaskier chose Geralt. Geralt chose Jaskier. He only wonders if it can weather the waiting storm his disappearance has likely caused. 

His father, for one, will not be happy. He had never intended to return to take up his birthright; ruling had never been for him, and now that he’s satisfied his wanderlust, he knows that he could never truly be happy with a stationary life. Still, Jaskier had intended to slowly broach the subject with his father; perhaps nudge the title towards his sister, who would undoubtedly be better at it than he. After being gone for several months, nearly a year, if he’s quite honest, Jaskier is certain that the conversation will be nothing near peaceful. But that’s no matter. He’ll stop in Oxenfurt when they get close, and will send an explanatory letter to Lettenhove before word reaches him of his reappearance. 

He spends the next week caught up in thought, trapped between his burgeoning inspiration from being back on the road, and the feeling of dread curdling up in the pit of his stomach at the thought of how bad this could all turn out to be. 

“You’re being quiet.” Geralt says after they check into the same inn they’d met Lambert at the previous year. They can’t afford inns the whole way down, but after a week of sleeping in caves, and huddled in a single bedroll for warmth (though Jaskier is loathe to admit it, Geralt doesn’t actually exude much in the way of warmth, and is actually more of a heatsink. The whole ordeal is more about different comforts.), Jaskier feels that they deserve a night of comfort.

“Well, then you should be happy. Always complaining about my singing, and questions and-”

“Hmm.”

“See?” Jaskier protests. “That there was a complaint, and you were the one who asked me to talk.”

“I didn’t ask you to talk,” Geralt slips his swords from off his shoulder, and begins the arduous task of undressing from his armor. “I mentioned that you were being quiet.”

“And does that concern you? I can talk, if you’re so interested. I’ve got plenty to say.”

“No. It’s-” Geralt pauses in untying his boots, his eyes latching onto Jaskier as if there’s something to discern in the way he hesitates to set his lute down. “You talk. Not talking is concerning.”

Just like that, Jaskier melts. 

“I’m worried.” He admits, finally placing his lute back in it’s case. He sits on the bed beside Geralt’s swords, and folds Geralt’s clothes as he slips them off. “Kaer Morhen was nice, but it’s not always going to be like that.”

Geralt raises a brow in questioning as he slips into the prepared bath. Steam rises from the water, like spectral hands rising towards the ceiling. It is different now than it was the last time they were here. The snow has melted, and now everything is simply wet and miserable. People are still out though, as if the cold does not bother them, and from the window of their room, he can see a couple crossing from an alley to the stables, where he presumes they’ll be using the cover to hide their indecent activities. 

“It’s nothing.” He says, brushing aside Geralt’s concern. “But I’ll be glad when we get back down this damned mountain to civilization. Can you believe these sheets? They’re of better use as sandpaper.”

It’s changing the subject. Jaskier knows it. He’s sure that Geralt feels the trepidation inching across their bond like frost across a lake. But for once, he’s happy for Geralt’s lack of emotional intelligence, for he doesn’t seem to know what to make of it. He fixes Jaskier with a searching look, and then sinks deeper into the water. 

“Can you wash my hair?”

Jaskier smiles and rolls up his sleeves. “Of course.”


End file.
